


Safety Dance

by InkSplots



Category: DC Extended Universe, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: F/M, Joker (DCU) Played by Jared Leto, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, POV Joker (DCU), POV Original Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSplots/pseuds/InkSplots
Summary: At one end of the dance floor, you have the Joker. He's been bored since Harley Quinn disappeared and is ready to take on a new project. On the other end, you have Bear, a woman who has reluctantly allowed herself to be dragged to the Joker's club. Their meeting will change everything... (M-rated for references to graphic and disturbing events. No explicit sexual content, non-con rating is for the Joker being the Joker.)
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel, Joker (DCU)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. The Safety Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to Batman, The Joker, DC Comics, or anything recognizable from various storylines or forms of media featuring the Joker. I own only the original elements of this story, the writing or publishing of which earn me no money. (I also own no rights to the songs from which the chapter titles are taken.)

Baroness was lonely. Thinking back on it, that was the only reason she had accepted this invitation - from her most-disliked coworker, no less - to go to a club. Baroness (Bear to her friends, but _never_ Nessie) hated to dance. And yet…

" _Nessie,"_ Chelsea had simpered, " _You simply_ must _come with us to the club! You're always sitting at home by yourself. Come have some fun with the girls!"_ And Bear had accepted.

Moving to Gotham had been rough, far rougher than she must have at first believed, if she was willing to tag along to what was, by all accounts, one of the rougher clubs in the already-shady city. She regretted the decision now, listening to Chelsea attempt to explain the club's location to Amanda, one of the other girls going who had volunteered to drive a second vehicle so no one had to take a taxi. Bear hadn't realized how many people were coming along, but she supposed they could count themselves in a 'safety in numbers' scenario. It seemed as though it would be needed.

"It's called The Jester's Crown, surely you've heard of it," Chelsea was saying somewhat derisively to Amanda.

"Of course I've heard of it," Amanda defended herself, "I've just never been there. Is it in Old Gotham?"

"No, it's actually in the East End part of town." This apparently held meaning for Amanda, who nodded in understanding. Encouraged, Chelsea continued with, "Specifically, it's in the Bowery, really close to Crime Alley, on the outskirts of Crown Point."

"Ah, okay, I get the name now," Amanda giggled. Bear couldn't help frowning at the slightly younger girl, thanking her lucky star that they weren't facing each other directly. Amanda was nice enough, but Bear couldn't help but think that this club sounded like a wonderful place to go if you wanted to die a horrifically violent death.

Undeterred, Amanda said, "I'm pretty sure I know where you mean, but I'll follow you anyway. Is everyone ready to go?"

"Wait, are we going now?" a new-ish girl named Haven asked, adding, "We're all still dressed in our work clothes. We'll look a little odd in a club."

Bear nodded her agreement with this, thinking that she could probably come up with some kind of feasible excuse if she was given time to 'go change for the club'.

"No need!" Chelsea shrugged. "No matter what you wear, you're not going to stick out at Jester's Crown. Besides, everyone looks great! Even Nessie looks okay!"

Bear shot a withering look in Chelsea's direction, but the irritatingly-perky blonde seemed unfazed. "Come on girls, let's head out! The club's best DJ is on now, but his set is going to end if we wait much longer."

With that, all eight females piled into the two cars and made their way across Gotham City. Sitting in the cramped backseat of Amanda's Volkswagen Beetle, Bear nervously eyed the scenery as it shifted slowly from stately, gothic-style architecture to something that managed to be even less comforting. The car was rapidly surrounded by squat, unfriendly-looking buildings. _If they could even be called buildings,_ Bear thought darkly. They were more aptly described as run-down concrete slabs with only a few scattered slices of fogged grey glass to serve as windows.

Between the broken-down husks, the shadows gathered thickly, seeming to drown anything in their midst. Or maybe that was Bear projecting. She certainly felt like she was drowning. In the span of the ten-minute car ride, she had thought over her regret of accepting the invitation upwards of fifty times. Bear shook herself, trying to dredge up some determination to take this experience as it came, focusing on the good rather than the bad, but as they pulled up to the nightclub, all of her good intentions disappeared with her sense of safety.

Somehow, despite her dislike for Chelsea, Bear hadn't really believed the woman would bring them somewhere unsafe. Her first look at the Jester's Crown made her reconsider. It looked like any other club she had ever been to (not that she had been to many, but they all seemed to look the same) except that the whole building seemed to be colored an odd gunmetal grey, broken up by splashes of brick-red paint. Bear fervently hoped it was a coincidence that most of the splashes were roughly head-level.

Rather than an official, properly-lit sign - or even a simple neon one - the name of the club was spray-painted on the side of a wall, seeming for all the world to have been placed there by a vandal and lit with a faulty spotlight that flickered on and off at a speed that would make an epileptic severely uncomfortable. The only upside was that the light distracted from how all but two of the blacked-out windows were broken. The others had been boarded up with sheets of plywood, presumably to keep light, homeless murderers, drug-addicted prostitutes, and bugs out of the building.

As everyone emerged from the parked cars, Haven said excitedly, "Wow, Chelsea! This place looks great!" Everyone echoed her sentiment and the group drifted readily toward the entrance of the club. Bear followed behind, feeling a little as though she had fallen into the Twilight Zone, but unwilling to stay outside in the rough neighborhood by herself.

The similarity to other clubs continued when Bear entered. The wall of noise was always to be expected. While she didn't enjoy the overload of her senses, Bear admitted to herself that it was almost comforting in this case. She made it through other nights doing things she didn't want to and would make it through this one just the same.

She trailed behind her group, managing to catch up just as they settled at a large, circular table set on one side of the room. Everyone sat down, scooting around the booth until each woman had a sufficiently-large seat. Chelsea, sitting somewhere toward the middle of the rounded cushion, leaned forward to speak, a bright smile exposing her perfectly straight teeth.

"We're so lucky! We got here in time for the DJ's last set. He's honestly the best guy they've got." The other women looked politely interested and Chelsea rolled her eyes as she pouted dramatically, "-So we shouldn't waste his talent by sitting here! Let's go dance!" Chelsea's carefully-highlighted curls bounced as she scooted back around to exit the booth, forcing several girls out before her. One by one, Bear's co-workers disappeared, shrugging, onto the dance floor.

"Are you coming, Baroness?"

Bear grimaced inwardly, resolving to speak to Gemma on Monday morning about her preferences where names were concerned. Gemma was nice enough, though, and Bear gave a small smile as she shook her head. "I don't really dance. I've mentioned that, right? When I go to the club, I usually end up guarding the table."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I think that's kind of what they were counting on," Gemma said, grimacing apologetically as she backed down the shallow trio of steps toward the dance floor. Left alone at the purse-scattered table, Bear sighed and wished that she was anywhere else.

* * *

Farther into the building, a pale man sprawled back against the rich violet leather of his couch, knowing the sharp contrast it made against his skin and the green of his hair. He luxuriated in the knowledge, savored the idea of the jarring sight he presented to anyone who dared to peer through the fogged air in an attempt to see the 'VIP' platform. The Joker chuckled softly to himself, exposing teeth that glinted metallically in the low light. The only 'Very Important Person' to have sat on this couch was currently occupying it and saw no purpose in sharing his status with another.

A subtle motion from Frost pulled the Joker's attention back to the current moment and he beckoned the man over, listening to the information given. "Thanks, Jonny-boy," Joker dismissed, drawing back into his thoughts as the man stepped back into the shadows at the edge of the platform.

So Markson had come through after all, he mused. A wicked grin played on his red lips as Joker mentally meandered through the directions his night could take. Whichever way he played things, his night was looking up.

* * *

Across the crowded club, Bear's night was not improving. She had warded off several advances, all from men who felt that - as she wasn't dancing - she ought to be drinking. Bear didn't mind beer and was actually rather fond of tequila, but felt that this wasn't the right environment to be less-than fully cognizant.

Added to that, Bear had yet to even glimpse any of her coworkers. She was pleased to avoid the awkward small talk that would inevitably ensue and the dance floor was packed, but she couldn't help but feel a little left out.

Deciding that was silly, Bear turned her attention to the music. Most of the songs were strange choices for a place where people wanted to dance. Normally, clubs focused on pop music; beat-driven songs that make it easy to disguise that one doesn't know how to dance. Not The Jester's Crown, apparently. Instead, the DJ played songs from heavier bands, more alternative. From just the short time Bear had been paying attention, she could pick out The Killers, My Chemical Romance, and even The Dropkick Murphys. The only sort of connection between the songs was a tendency toward themes of death or dying, though the motif of smiling seemed to be equally represented.

Strange themes for a club, especially when combined. Of course, Bear realized that this was far from an ordinary business. There were too many small touches, strange and off-putting quirks… It was as though the entire club was an inside joke. _But who's the one laughing?_ Bear wondered, trying not to put too much thought into the chill that ran down her spine at the unspoken question.

* * *

"Say, Jonny," Joker drawled, jerking his chin at the henchman who obligingly moved closer. "Do ya notice anything odd about that corner?"

Frost watched the boss's eyes and followed their path to a round booth off the side of the dance floor. He studied it for a long moment, watching the small brunette woman scroll through her phone before shrugging at the Joker. "Not especially, boss."

"That woman isn't dancing."

"Want me to ask her to leave?"

"Now, why would I want to alienate a paying customer?" Joker asked rhetorically. "No, I just have to wonder… Why pay the cover charge to sit at a table not dancing, not drinking, and not getting picked up? Every guy making the rounds down there has gone up to her at least once and she's shut 'em all down."

Frost didn't have anything to say to this, but the Joker was on his own train of thought. He was fixating on this woman and he didn't know why, but she was bothering him. Why was she in his club so that she could avoid doing everything people do in clubs?

Finally, he looked up at the henchman, slapping his open hand loudly against the top of the table. "Frost, I want ya to go ask her to dance."

For once, Frost didn't immediately spring to action, sharpening the Joker's interest even further. "But boss, I don't dance."

"Ask her anyway," he ordered.

"She ain't exactly pretty," Frost expanded.

"Neither are you. Neither am I. Ask her to dance."

"But what if she says yes?"

"You'll get a bonus in your next paycheck," the Joker conceded with a crazed grin. Fascinated as he was with Jonny's new-found backbone, he did have other plans in place that he wanted to watch pan out. Perhaps that's why, when Frost continued to hesitate, he added, "That's a lot nicer than what you're gonna get if you're not asking her to dance in the next minute and a half."

Frost nodded once and started down the stairs while the Joker watched smilingly. Frost really was one of his favorite henchmen, almost entirely due to the man's deeply-buried moral compass. Joker was breaking him one half-step at a time, but he was doing it so slowly that Frost thought he was simply bending. That's the way Joker liked it. No one should be able to anticipate the game except for him. His green eyes wandered to the woman Frost was approaching and he mentally added, _And I'm the only one who gets to play games in this place._

* * *

To say Frost was reluctant was an understatement. The woman wasn't his usual type, but that wouldn't have bothered him overly much in the past. No, she wasn't the issue here; the Joker was. Since Harley had disappeared, he had been steadily growing bored and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before he turned his sights on a new victim. The Joker was never satisfied unless he had something in the works.

What the boss needed, Frost decided as he approached the woman's couch, was someone to twist. Maybe he would find someone tonight. Markson had brought an entire crowd of females for him to pick through. Surely one of them would fit his standards… Either way, his attention surely wouldn't be held by this woman. She was medium height, brunette, and curvy with kind eyes and a peaceful demeanor, nearly the opposite of the blonde, manically-sadistic, physically-perfect Harley Quinn.

Frost stood next to the woman's couch and waited until he had attracted her attention. "Hello," he said awkwardly.

She turned to him and Frost was thrown by her eyes. They were large and impossibly dark, drawing him in so quickly and deep that he felt like he was drowning in their depths, at least until she smiled. "Hi."

"Do you- ah, do you mind if I sit down?"

He gestured at an empty stretch of cushion in the booth, feeling like an absolute imbecile, but she continued smiling. "Please, go right ahead."

"So…" he trailed, searching for something to say. "Are you having fun?"

She sighed, shoulders slumping. "Not especially," she admitted. "I'm just here because this coworker I kind of hate asked me to come and I'm sick of sitting at home by myself. But I really don't like to dance."

"Oh. That's actually why I came over here. Are you sure I can't convince you? Just one dance would be enough for h- for me."

The woman had frowned at his little slip, but simply shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. It's really sweet of you to ask and thank you for trying, but I'm just going to hang out here. You should go dance, though. I'm sure there are plenty of women who would love someone to go out on the floor with."

Frost shook his head. "I'm not much of dancer myself, to tell the truth. Is there any chance I could buy you a drink? You know, to make up for bothering you?"

"You haven't been bothering me," the woman said earnestly, leaning forward to lock his gaze with her own. "It's actually been really nice to talk to someone tonight. And I would take you up on the drink, but I have a feeling I'm going to end up as the Designated Driver tonight, so I'd better not."

He nodded understandingly and offered his hand. "My name's Jonny, by the way."

She smiled broadly, shaking his head. "I'm Baroness. It was lovely to meet you."

Frost took the hint for what it was and slid from the couch, returning her smile as he moved away. It was her eyes, he decided as he made his way back to the boss's platform. She looked _at_ him, not through him as too many other women - hell, like people in general - seemed to do. She spoke to him like a real person and not a possibility, a means to be exploited if the right buttons were pushed. Baroness, despite the strange name, was _real_ , and Frost suddenly realized how little in his life had seemed solid since he started working for the Joker.

As he reached the top of the smoke-shadowed staircase, Frost met the Joker's green eyes and shook his head slightly. With a grin that somehow seemed impishly thoughtful, the pale man sat back in his purple leather couch and continued watching the floor. When he was brave enough to pay attention, Frost noted that his boss's weighing gaze strayed often to the tucked-away couch where Baroness still sat.

Distraction came shortly in the slender, bubbly form of Markson as she bounded up the staircase, stopping just short of insult to get Joker's permission to proceed. True to form, Joker waited a long minute to acknowledge her, pretending not to notice the woman bouncing on her heels at the edge of his platform.

When he did speak, the Joker's tone was darkly expectant. "Well, Markson, what didja bring for me?"

Markson's pretty face was pulled into an expression of pride. She had always creeped Frost out a little, if he was being honest with himself. She looked so wholesome and sweet, but was utterly mercenary… and she was good at it. Frost carefully kept his eyes focused on the crowds filling the dance floor, though Markson was still close enough that she never left his peripheral vision.

"Joker, baby, I've brought you an amazing collection of the best women. You're going to be really pleased with everything-"

"Why don't ya let me decide what I'm gonna be real pleased with?" Joker interrupted. Frost could hear the sneer filling the boss's voice, but whether it was at Markson's incredible self-assurance or her attempt to call him by a pet name, he wasn't sure. "Where are they at?"

"Straight out there," Markson said, pointing at the dance floor and closing one carefully made-up blue eye in a childish attempt to aim more accurately. "I've kept them dancing in front of your platform all night. They think it's where the bass is best, but I wanted you to have the chance to look them all over-"

The Joker's pale form appeared just behind her shoulder, snaking an arm around to grip the lower half of her face with one tattooed hand. Judging by the way the tendons of the man's arm stood out, the hold over her mouth must have hurt, but Markson's eyes closed in a way that looked almost orgasmic. "Has anyone ever told you that you… talk… so… much…" Markson's mouth moved under the Joker's hand and, though Frost couldn't hear what she said, Joker's red mouth twisted in a chilling grin. "That's right, I have." He released her abruptly, pushing her slender form away from him so roughly she stumbled. "Now, which women are we talking about?"

Markson straightened up slowly, gulping a few breaths before saying in a slightly huskier voice, "The six women in business clothes, all dancing about ten feet from the bottom of your staircase." The platform grew silent, allowing the thumping music to take precedence while the Joker surveyed the offerings Markson had brought.

Frost fought not to let his face grow judgmental. Chelsea Markson had come to the Joker specifically, offering to help him find a replacement for Harley. She wanted to be compensated. At first, that was her only condition, the only thing it would take for her to deliver over an innocent woman to one of the worst monsters Gotham had to offer, but Markson's views had shifted over the time it had taken to find the right woman for the Clown Prince of Crime. Now, she wanted two things: compensation and a reward of a different sort, required to be given to her by the Joker himself. She was one of those women who desired powerful men, not to stand with them or even to belong to them, but to stake the most fragile claim. Frost didn't understand why anyone would volunteer to fuck the Joker, but Markson was a special kind of crazy. Arguably, the worst kind. Certainly the most dangerous. The Joker was the one who staked the claims, and Markson's deal was probably going to end the way most did with the Clown: death.

For now, Markson was still confident, saying with pride, "Well? Did I lie? I told you I had what you asked for. Six beautiful women, ready for you to take your pick. You get to craft your next Harley, take a blank slate and break her down. You're in charge of the whole process, from beginning to end-"

This time, the Joker's pale hand wrapped around Markson's throat instead of her face. "Stop… talking." He pulled her back against himself, her back resting flush against his naked chest. It was a power move, nothing more, but Frost could tell Markson took it as a proof of her irresistible nature. "You're right: ya brought me six beautiful women." Markson smiled softly, victoriously, but the Joker's grip tightened. As her breathing cut off abruptly, he said with a chuckle, "But I didn't ask for beauty."

Head pressed back against the crook of the Joker's shoulder, Markson still managed to gasp out, "Wh-what did you ask f-for?"

He tsked at her. "Weren't ya listening when I told ya? That was stupid. I told ya I wanted… sssspark."

Just as Markson's eyes began to lose focus, the Joker dropped his hand from her throat and stepped away, leaving her to collapse on the floor while he stepped to the edge of the platform. Nervously, Frost noted that the man's gaze strayed not to Markson's beautiful offerings, but to the lone woman sitting in a booth on the side of the dance floor.

"Now _that's_ spark," he drawled before correcting, "The beginnings of it, anyway. She comes somewhere she doesn't want to be because she feels like she has to, but refuses to do what everyone else does."

"How is that-" Markson coughed dryly before continuing. " _Spark_? That sounds like a waste of time to me."

"Of course it does," Joker responded, patting her cheek somewhat harder than was necessary. "Because - despite your best efforts - you are entirely normal. Oh, don't get me wrong," he said, catching the outraged look in her eyes, "You're a bitch, but other than that, you're one-hundred percent average. She's an… aberration. She's different, and that makes me want to dig. Ya both know how I like to dig." He gave a cruel chuckle, flashing metallic teeth brightly enough for even Frost, still looking at the dance floor, to see before the expression dropped. Deadly serious, he said, "Markson, our deal can still stand if ya retrieve the couch girl and bring her to meet me. "

Markson's blue eyes heated to an uncomfortable level as she nodded sharply. "Point her out to me and I'll get her to you."

"Frost," Joker commanded simply.

Reluctant as he was to reveal the gentle Baroness to this freak, Frost knew any fight from him would do nothing but bring death. Markson stepped up beside him and he pointed vaguely over to the couch. "She's sitting over there."

"Come _on_ , Frosty, ya can do better than that. Ya found out her name, didn't cha?"

Spine straightening at the implied reprimand from his boss, Frost nodded. "Her name is Baroness."

Markson's head whipped around as she stared at the henchman. "Baroness? You- You want _Nessie_ , Joker?" She gave a loud guffaw that clashed terribly with the poised, graceful appearance she strove to present.

"Baroness," the Joker repeated softly, savoring the name. "Yes, that'd be her. Bring her to me, Markson. If ya fail… heh, the deal is off." He turned to take his place at the couch once more, but paused, tossing over his shoulder, "Bring Frost with ya. He's already spoken to her once. I'm sure he can convince her to join us here."

Markson snorted. "She's part of my group. I'm the one who brought her here. I'm sure I can get her to go anywhere I want."

Striving for a blank tone, Frost retorted, "Yeah, she mentioned you earlier. She doesn't like you much."

The blonde woman gaped while the Joker gave an appreciative chuckle. "Well, this just keeps getting better. Jonny, if Baroness hates Markson here so much, why did she come along?"

Before Frost could give some kind of inexact answer, Markson cut in. "I only invited her because it would look suspicious if she was the only one _not_ invited. I never expected her to come along. She must be really desperate for company."

"Well, I'm sure we can fix that," Joker responded with a wicked grin. "Bring her to me."

* * *

It had been nearly an hour and a half since they had gotten to The Jester's Crown and Bear was well and truly sick of sitting at the sticky table, watching purses, and waiting for someone to come back. At this point, it was obvious that none of her coworkers actually cared. No, they were all utterly focused on their night dancing, and while she couldn't really blame them, Bear was beyond ready to leave. At this point, she was busy wondering how to get their attention to let someone know she was going to take a taxi home, but couldn't work out how to do so while not leaving their things unattended.

Bear called a taxi company she trusted and ordered a cab, due to arrive in roughly half an hour since they were based on the opposite side of Gotham. After everything was settled about a ride, Bear was ready to risk leaving the bags so she could walk to the dance floor and tell everyone what was going on, but she caught sight of a familiar someone walking up to the table. "Jonny! Still not dancing, huh?"

"'Jonny'?" a cruel voice parroted as Chelsea sashayed out from behind the sturdy body of Bear's earlier acquaintance. "Well, isn't that sweet? Nessie finally made a friend."

Deciding she wasn't in the mood for Chelsea's thinly-veiled sarcasm and hatefulness, Bear rolled her eyes and started edging out of the booth. "Hey, tell everyone I left, okay? I called a cab and I'll head home from here. See you Monday."

"Oh, I don't think you're going anywhere," Chelsea simpered, smiling sickeningly at Bear.

The curvier brunette narrowed dark eyes at her most-hated coworker. "You know what, Chelsea? Fuck off. I'm leaving and if you try to stop me, I'm going to make you eat your stapler."

"Shut up, bitch," Chelsea hissed, moving to stand uncomfortably close to Bear. Before she could ask what the blonde was doing, something was pressed firmly to her ribcage. "This is a knife. My favorite knife, in fact. You're going to move with me and act like nothing is wrong, or I'm going to cut you."

Bear stared disbelievingly at Chelsea while Jonny moved closer. "Boss isn't going to like your methods, Markson."

"Back off, Frost," Chelsea said flatly. "I know he likes to slice up his girls."

Jonny shook his head. "What he does and what he'll let other people do are two different things and I'll tell you again: he isn't going to like this."

Chelsea simply sniffed, grabbed Bear's right bicep with her free hand, and began tugging her roughly across the dance floor. Bear thought for sure someone would notice she was being taken somewhere against her will, but between the flashing lights, the booming music, and the gyrating crowds, they were attracting exactly zero attention. It looked like she was in for the long haul.

To her not-entirely-unwelcome shock, Bear wasn't dragged out of a side door and into the alleyway or anything similar. Instead, Chelsea pulled her at an angle across the dance floor and up to a fog-obscured staircase at the head of the club. Something in her cried out a warning and Bear stopped short.

Chelsea stopped along with her, throwing a vicious glare at her. "Keep it moving," she growled, pressing the blade a little closer to Bear's ribs.

Bear slowly began to climb the mist-shrouded staircase, carefully watching her step and reflecting thankfully that she had chosen flats for work that day instead of heels. There weren't many stairs, just enough to set the raised platform apart from the rest of the club, creating a sort of viewing area where one could see the dancing, feel the energy of the crowd, but not be part of it. It was odd and gave Bear the strangest sense of power, but when she reached the top of the staircase, other matters began to occupy her mind.

The platform was sparse, made up of a flat, glossy surface unlined by railings. A little dangerous, but Bear supposed if one was stupid enough to walk close to the edge, they knew what risks they were taking. The centerpiece of the area - and the only real furnishings - were a narrow table that appeared to be made up of the same material as the flooring, and a couch-like seat. It looked for all the world like someone had taken one side of a booth from a restaurant and placed it on the platform, leaving the occupant of the padded bench to stare over the mirror-like surface of the table at whoever stood before it. Of course, the color of the couch - a deep, rich shade of mulberry - was unusual enough to be off-putting, but not nearly so much as the man sitting in it.

He was sitting in an area crossed with heavy shadows, but what little Bear could see of him was eye-catching, to say the least, and she got the impression he would likely be a decently good-looking man if only he hadn't taken such obvious pains to avoid it. His eyebrows were shaved, leaving blank patches above his eyes that somehow made his face look incomplete. Added to the strangeness, his wide mouth was lined with a thick coat of bright red lipstick, standing out against his ghostly pale skin. His head was tipped back, his slightly-parted lips revealing glistening teeth. In fact, they seemed to be glistening a bit more than was normal, but Bear supposed that could be a trick of the lights. After all, these were the same lights that seemed to make his hair appear to be an odd greenish color.

The man's clothing made no effort toward normalization, either. He wore what seemed to be a suit jacket, buttoned only at the very bottom and left to gape at the top around his bare chest, his skin so light that it appeared at first to be a white shirt. Due to the odd light, Bear couldn't tell if the jacket was black or a very dark purple. She didn't know who would choose to buy - much less wear - a purple suit jacket, but she would bet the answer was 'someone who chooses to sit on a purple leather couch'.

Chelsea didn't stop at the edge of the platform, but instead began dragging Bear forward until they stood in the middle of the open space before the table. "Here you go, boss-man. Told you I could get her up here."

The man's face was still heavily obscured by shadows, but Bear could see that he inclined his head slightly to glance at them. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she could have sworn a slight flicker of anger crossed his expression as he noticed the knife held to her side.

His red-painted lips parted further as he said, "Markson, consider yourself dismissed."

Chelsea smiled flirtatiously at him and pulled the blade away from Bear's ribs with a flourish. She shot the bewildered brunette a fiery glare and retreated down the staircase they had just climbed. "Frost," came the next command. Jonny positioned himself at the top of the stairs. Bear wondered briefly if he was keeping people from trying to come up or stopping her from leaving the platform. _Or it could be both_ , she mused, but her attention was grabbed shortly by movement from the man on the couch.

The man took a deep breath, face tilted toward the ceiling just above his head and slowly brought it down to face her as he exhaled. Some trick of the light had brought his face into sudden, sharp relief and Bear's eyes flicked across the newly-revealed details. The man's hair was indeed green and his jacket truly was purple, but neither were his most arresting feature. His eyes were open now, revealing irises a paler green than his hair, but no less striking. Tattoos in a spidery style stood out starkly against his chalky skin, but not nearly so much as the scarlet-dashed lips, now stretched into a wide, slightly-crazed smile.

"Hello," he greeted pleasantly enough, raking her over with his gaze.

"Hello," Bear answered back woodenly. Her mind was whirring at such a high speed that it would be impossible to string together a coherent sentence.

He gave a short chuckle, almost as though he could sense her desperate fear mingled with curiosity. "Well, I would say now is the time for introductions! What is your name?"

"What's yours?" Bear countered, instantly regretting the challenge in her tone.

He didn't seem to take immediate offense. Instead, his grin grew impossibly wider. "Ya don't know who I am?" Soundlessly, Bear shook her head. "How long have ya lived in Gotham, sweetness?"

"Five months," she answered shortly. Brief answers seemed to be best. They stopped her quavering voice from being too obvious.

The man nodded thoughtfully. "I guess we… ah, move in different circles." A thin, wild laugh burst from him. Bear must have missed the joke. "What brings ya to a place like Gotham?"

Bear took a deep breath, trying to sound collected as she answered, "I worked for a software company in Dallas. My supervisor told me I could transfer to the Gotham branch and get a promotion and pay raise, effective immediately." She gave a carefully careless shrug. "I would have been stupid to pass that up."

"And what is your new... position?"

The way he murmured the last word made Bear deeply uncomfortable, but she pressed on. "Executive Lead of Technical Development: User Interface Department."

He threw his head back and laughed. "A bullshit title for a bullshit position. How utterly _insane_."

Bear would have liked to argue, but he wasn't exactly wrong. The pay raise had been what she had promised, but the promotion was in name only. She still worked in a bland little cubicle with no view other than that of thirty other bland little cubicles. So, rather than argue, Bear just gave a small, acquiescing nod.

The man's laughter ended as abruptly as it had started. "But ya never answered my question. What's your name?"

Fortunately, Bear had enough time to think of something from the first time the question was asked. "Sara."

All traces of mirth disappeared from the man's face immediately, leaving a chilling man who obviously wasn't completely present mentally. Bear fought to keep her face blank as he tilted his head to the side, studying her intently. "The first thing ya need to know about me," he said, voice a soft warning, "is that I don't like liars."

"It's the truth," Bear lied. "S-A-R-A Owens, O-W-E-N-S."

He rose slowly from the purple leather couch, moving toward Bear with a smooth, gliding walk. "I _really_ don't like liars." He began to walk behind her, but Bear turned to keep him in sight. He noticed her unease immediately, smirking a bit as he traced a finger under her jaw. "Don't… even try… to lie… Baroness." With the last word, he chucked her under the chin and stared down at her.

Bear regulated her breathing, refusing to meet the man's pale green gaze as he continued to move around her. "You sent Jonny down to talk to me."

"That's rii-iight," he sang out.

"How do you know I didn't give him a fake name? After all, 'Sara' is much more believable a name than 'Baroness'."

His mouth quirked up on one side. "Well, he's not my only source, Nessie." Bear desperately fought back a snort. Well, now she knew exactly who the man's other source was. _Seems like Chelsea has a date with that stapler sooner rather than later._

The man was still pressing her, though. "That is what ya prefer to be called, isn't it?"

"Mm-hmm," Bear hummed in assent. "Nessie's fine."

He stopped short, eyes boring a hole in her face - though Bear refused to look. "Now, _that_ is a lie. And… heh, ya know what they say about three strikes." Bear frowned, but before she could respond, he had grabbed a handful of her long hair. He knew how to pull hair, she reflected, much more calmly than she felt. He had gripped the strands close to her scalp, and so controlled almost all movement of her head. He forced her to look at him. "What is your name?"

At first, she didn't answer, but he tugged on her hair until her roots were screaming and she finally admitted, "Bear! My friends call me Bear."

"Bear," he repeated, smiling softly, looking for all the world like he wasn't physically controlling her. "How sweet. You're just like a teddy bear. That's what I'll call ya, too. Because we're going to be friends, Teddy Bear. I'm your new friend."

He released his grip and moved back to his couch. Bear forced herself not to rub at her head, but took the opportunity of him facing away to take in and release a long breath. The man was insane. He was unstable and dangerous and she needed to tread very carefully if she had any hope of getting out of here without him making boots from her skin or something.

When he had settled back on his seat, the man looked at her, smiling once more. "So, Teddy Bear, what'dja think of my club?"

Bear stayed silent for a long moment, not wanting to be honest and thus rude, but now she knew how violently he responded to lies. There was no winning, so she chose not to participate. He wasn't going to let her avoid this, though.

"Here's another thing ya need to know about me, little girl: I don't like repeating myself. What do you think of my club?" Each word was said with careful emphasis and a deep stare. He wasn't going to let this go.

"What do you want from me?" Bear asked finally, letting the defeat and weariness flow through her tone rather than risk sounding snappish and enraging him.

He tutted at her. "First off, I don't answer questions, I ask 'em. And second, that was rude, little Bear. I'll forgive ya, though, since it's partially my fault. I never told ya what to call me. How about… Mr. J?"

"Mr. J," Bear repeated, willing both of her eyebrows to stay in their rightful places rather than creep up her forehead. "Well, _Mr. J_ , you don't like questions and you don't like repeating yourself… You must not be fond of children."

This was fairly rich coming from Bear, who had never been overly fond of children herself, but the man's ever-present smile grew chilling as he pressed fingertips to his bare chest. "Me? Not fond of children? Ha, ha, haaa... Don't be silly. I love 'em!" His green gaze narrowed, putting Bear into sharp focus. "Their screams are so much sweeter. So much more… honest."

Bear tried to keep from giving him the reaction he was obviously searching for, but she could feel herself pale. She had been warned - and had generally accepted - that Gotham was home to many criminals. She had even banked on encountering one at some point, but this man? He had admitted to killing children. Worse, he admitted to _enjoying_ it. This more than anything else drove home the evil nature of the man Bear was currently conversing with.

Mr. J sat back with an air of satisfaction, somehow giving the impression that he knew every thought that had just run through her head. In a silky voice, he asked, "Any more questions?" Bear shook her head quickly.

"There's a good girl," he praised, making Bear's stomach flip unpleasantly. "Now, rephrase that first pesky question and answer mine, then we'll be okay."

Bear sighed. "I don't understand what you want from me. I can't flatter you and say nice things about your club without lying, which you also don't want me to do. I'm stuck with a lack of options."

He stared at her, obviously taken aback by the sudden venting of her frustrations. Fortunately, her complaints seemed to strike him as amusing rather than insulting. Cackling, he said, "Why don'tcha just be honest, Teddy Bear, and I'll deal with the rest. For the last time, what do you think of my club?"

"I didn't want to come here," Bear answered flatly. "I don't like dancing, I don't like clubs, and your particular business looks like the headquarters for an exceptionally violent gang of homeless carnies. At least, from the outside. Inside, this is actually a pretty nice place. It's definitely nicer than any of the clubs I've ever been to in Dallas."

Mr. J eyed her, nodding thoughtfully. "I would probably take that as more of a compliment if I believed ya ever went to more than three clubs the entire time you lived in Dallas, but thanks anyway." He leaned forward slightly. "And as for what I want from ya? Well, that's an entirely different topic, isn't it?"

Bear stiffened slightly before she could stop herself, but Mr. J settled back into the leather of the couch. "For now, let's just focus on tonight. I don't like that ya don't dance. It's bad for business, a pretty girl coming in here and sitting alone at a booth, not drinking or looking for a man. Throws people off."

Sensing they were getting to the point of this bizarre little meeting, Bear nodded understandingly. "Trust me, I don't want to disrupt your business, I was just making sure no one messed with the bags left at the table."

He laughed deeply once more. "Sweetness, in my club, no one is going to touch your bags. You go do whatever it is that ya choose to do, and I'll make sure your things are safe."

Bear gritted her teeth, knowing from his expectantly-raised lack of eyebrow that he was waiting for a show of gratitude. "Thank you, Mr. J. That is very kind of you."

"It is, isn't it?" he agreed. "Maybe ya should come over here and thank me more... personally."

Wanting desperately to ignore the graciously-extended hand, Bear glanced behind herself to find that Jonny had turned around and seemed ready to escort her into Mr. J's arms. Rather than risk being restrained somehow, Bear stepped forward and placed her hand into Mr. J's, stifling a shiver at the clamminess of his skin.

With his cold fingers gripping her own, Mr. J elegantly rose to his feet, pulling her to stand in front of him. Unsure of his plans, Bear tugged back a bit, but he wasn't having it. With one sharp jerk of her arm, Bear fell forward against him, cheek and shoulder making abrupt and unexpected contact with his tattooed chest.

She grabbed at his biceps, pushing to get herself back to a standing position, but he stopped the motion with a single hand pressing between her shoulder blades, keeping her trapped against him. Bear angled her head back far enough to remove it from his chest, but Mr. J's other hand crept up, gripping her chin to hold her face tipped up toward his. Bear frowned as pale skin, metallic teeth, and red-painted lips drew larger and larger in her field of vision, but just before she thought he was going to kiss her, Mr. J rested his lips against the corner of her mouth.

They stood like that for a long beat, faces pressed together but not moving, not kissing. Bear tried more than once to pull away, but his grip on her chin held firm. Just as she was thinking that he smelled better than she had expected, Mr. J began to slide his lips toward her ear.

Bear frowned even more deeply as he repeated the odd motion several more times, never reaching her ear, but never putting his lips truly against hers. When he had finished, Mr. J tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder and neck and linked his arms behind Bear's back, settling into a hug with a sigh as his chin rested on the top of her head. It was an odd motion, unexpectedly tender and entirely unfitting with their encounter so far, but he wasn't hurting her, so Bear couldn't bring herself to make too big a deal about it.

After what must have been nearly two full minutes, Mr. J's arms slackened and he allowed Bear to step back. Against her better judgment, she glanced up at his face and noted that his lipstick was smeared in what seemed to be a mirror image of what he had done to her. As Bear stared at the bright line of red slashed across the hollow under his cheekbone, she reached up to wipe the matching color from her own cheek, but he caught her hand before her fingertips could make contact.

"Ah, ah, little girl. Don't touch that. This mark is your safe word. Everyone who sees it will know that you're mine and to harm ya would be… heh, _unwise_. Leave it on until ya head home for the night."

Bear nodded, trying desperately to ignore the part of his statement claiming her. Surely he misspoke. He must have. There was no other explanation. And thus, ignoring the other obvious explanation, Bear said, "Thanks again, Mr. J. I'm going to head back down."

He nodded. "I'll see ya soon, Teddy Bear." With that chilling word of farewell - or was it a warning? - he sank back onto the seat of his couch as Jonny moved to the side. Not making eye contact with anyone, Bear rushed down the smoke-obscured stairs and onto the dance floor, mingling blindly with the rushing crowd until she was certain she had blended in, then darted out the door as subtly as she could.

By some miracle, the taxi she had called an eternity ago was still waiting for her and Bear quickly climbed into the back seat, giving directions to a diner several blocks from her apartment. After the night she had experienced, there was no such thing as being too cautious.

* * *

After the sound of Bear's footsteps had faded down the stairs, the Joker spread his arms wide, resting them along the back of the couch. "Oh, Jonny-boy? Be a sport and get Markson for me, wouldja?"

"Right away, boss." Frost also moved down the stairs while the Joker tipped his head back, regarding the ceiling with distant eyes as he considered the encounter that had just taken place.

Only a scant few minutes later, Frost returned with Markson trailing behind him. Joker would like to think the short time span was due to Frost's discipline and hard work, but he knew Markson had in all likelihood been waiting at the bottom of the staircase for any sign that her presence would be accepted.

"Well?" she drew out immediately. "Did you finally realize what a waste of time she is and send her away?"

The Joker deliberately avoided even glancing in Markson's direction as he said casually, "Watch yourself. Ya know how I feel about questions. And not that it's any of your business, but I find her to be quite... fascinating."

Markson snorted and he finally fixed her with his green stare, smirking as he tossed out, "I wouldn't be so dismissive if I was you. After all, she's the only one ya brought me who's even close to what I wanted. Though ya did admit it was an accidental inclusion, so maybe there's no credit to be given…"

"Please," she purred contemptuously. "She wouldn't have come here for anyone else. Nessie worships the ground I walk on, despite what lies she may have told to _others_."

The last word was hissed with a glare at Frost. Joker pretended to be rubbing his jaw as he stifled a grin. Markson was desperately trying to impress him. It made her easy to control, to manipulate. But he couldn't play too much with her. He still needed her for a little longer. When he could bring himself to listen to her whining prattle again, Markson was rambling on about how hard 'Nessie' tried to be her friend. Obviously, this was a lie as the bitch didn't even have his Teddy Bear's name right. Normally, the Joker would take strides to correct this behavior now, but he simply added it to the growing list of strikes against Markson. It would be time to settle her tab soon enough.

"Stop. Talking. And listen… carefully." The words were spat out as cutting commands. "You're going to do exactly as I say and then I'll consider our deal complete."

Markson listened eagerly to his every word after that, even contributing an idea or two, helping him streamline the forming plan, though they couldn't actually start putting it into place until Monday at the earliest. Before he sent her off, she paused. "Are you sure you want me to get rid of the other women? I mean, you can have some fun with them without having to put any effort into breaking them. Think of them as an appetizer, something to hold you over, a distraction until you get Nessie."

The Joker considered this. Honestly, he was leaning toward refusal, but the sudden surge of discomfort he felt from Frost gave him pause. Would it push the henchman closer to the edge if he did what he liked to these women? He eyed the tendons standing out on the back of Frost's neck. That was a yes, and his face broke into a wide grin. "Ya know what, Markson? I'm gonna take you up on that. Frost will help ya load 'em up. He knows where to take 'em."

Markson nodded, suddenly the picture of efficiency. "You'll probably want to have someone take care of a car out front. One of the other girls drove." She gave him a quick description of the vehicle and started down the stairs, instructing Frost to follow her in a few minutes.

When she had left, Joker turned to Frost expectantly. "And where has my little Teddy Bear run off to?"

Frost's shoulders tensed. "She left, boss. Walked straight down the stairs and out the front door."

"And, what? You didn't think that was important enough to mention before?" The question was phrased as casually as possible, but Frost knew enough to start groveling right away.

"I'm sorry, boss. You were talking to Markson about some heavy shit and I didn't want to interrupt. Plus, you told her to go do whatever she wanted. I didn't think you were restricting her to the club-"

"Oh, Frosty, Frosty, Frosty… Sounds like ya didn't _think_ at all…" He paced for a moment before whipping around sharply to face his employee. "Make it up to me by following her and finding out everything you can. _Everything_. Don't come back until tomorrow, at least."

"So you don't want me to go with Markson?"

"No," he snapped. "Any moron can escort six unarmed women to my place, but I need a particular moron - you - to track her down. Do a good enough job and I'll… heh, I'll think about lightening your punishment."

Frost nodded and scurried away while Joker let out a frustrated sigh and ran hands through his green hair until it was as frazzled and chaotic as his thoughts. It was a good thing he had a few days before his plan was put into place. He needed to be at the top of his game for his new plaything. Fortunately, he mused, glinting gaze taking in the women being herded from the dance floor, there was no shortage of stones on which to sharpen his blade. Literally or metaphorically speaking.

Chuckling at his own wit, the Joker began making his deliberate way down the staircase leading from his platform.

* * *

On Monday morning, Bear found herself seated at her desk in her tiny, bland little cubicle at her boring, stereotypical job and couldn't help but feel thankful for it all. Over the past two days, her mind had strayed a thousand times to her encounter with the man who was likely a major criminal of Gotham. And though she had mostly stayed in her apartment, Bear hadn't noticed anyone following her or watching her movements. It would seem that she had walked away from her adventure without repercussion.

Nearly without repercussion, anyway. What effects Mr. J had on her were actually positive, such as a new appreciation for the simple perks of her life. She was careful not to let herself think she owed the man any sort of gratitude, however. He hadn't cared whether she was a better person for meeting him or any such romantic nonsense. No, he was a monster, and it was only through sheer luck that Bear had been left unscathed, especially considering how willing he seemed to be to harm her.

For her part, Bear had decided to avoid Chelsea as much as possible. The woman obviously had strong ties to Gotham's underworld, and while she didn't want to risk retaliation for turning Chelsea in, Bear just didn't want the trouble of trying to be around her.

So far, the avoidance had been easy. In fact, Bear hadn't seen any of the group that went to the club, but chalked it up to her reluctance to leave her desk. Burying herself in work was far more simple than navigating a social minefield or letting her mind wander to the man with the green hair and unnatural smile.

Bear shook off the thoughts of the mysterious and temperamental Mr. J and attempted for the eighth time to return to the spreadsheet she was supposed to be completing. As she worked, a pinprick of pain lit up on her neck. Bear tried to raise a hand to clap it over the spot, half expecting to find a mosquito or small bug on her skin, but her arm wouldn't move. Her steadily-increasing concern underwent a sharp spike when her muscles _did_ began to move because they still weren't under her control. Instead of lifting a hand to her neck, every muscle in Bear's body began to jerk and spasm until they felt ready to rip themselves from her bones.

She fell from her swiveling desk chair, collapsing on the floor. Just before she passed out, Bear heard a voice speaking to her boss, offering to drive the sick woman to the hospital. From what little she could gather while flickering in and out of consciousness, Bear learned that there had been a terrible explosion in an office building downtown and all emergency personnel had been sent there, so waiting for an ambulance wasn't an option.

From there, things got a little dicey for Bear. She faded in and out, sometimes aware of movement or conversations going on around her. The last thing she was really aware of was being rested on a cold surface and hearing a woman's voice.

"Here she is, as promised."

"Gotta admit, Markson, I had my doubts that ya were gonna come through."

There was no doubt in Bear's addled mind that the second voice belonged to Mr. J. Something about the deep tone with the slightly deranged affectation made for an incredibly distinctive voice. And Markson… Of course Bear wasn't lucky enough to be done dealing with Chelsea-the-bitch.

Even as Bear realized the woman's identity, she gave a dry chuckle. "Please, baby. I wasn't going to fail you."

"Mmm, good. Are ya ready for that reward now?"

"So ready," Chelsea moaned breathily. Bear prayed that she wasn't going to have to listen as whatever reward was given, but soon afterward, she heard a soft choking noise.

"What's the matter, doll?" Mr. J asked, voice filled with false innocence. "I thought ya wanted me to put it in."

"Y-you just stabbed me!"

"That's right," he purred. "Didja really think I was going to let ya walk away from this? Not only do ya know too much about me, but I don't let people renegotiate terms after a deal has been struck. Plus, you were a real bitch to my Teddy Bear, here." Another stifled groan shot through the room. "Now, you're lucky I like ya. That was an artery shot. Quick death. Just for you, sweetness."

"J- Joker..."

"Shh... Just accept it and fade gracefully. You're good at the whole 'grace' thing."

A strangled gurgle was the only sound, and after it had passed, the room was silent once more.

It was actually a positive that Bear didn't have control over her facial muscles yet. So, Mr. J's real identity was The Joker - or at least, it was the best real identity society had for the man. Connections snapped in Bear's sluggish mind, piecing together all the news stories she had half-heard in waiting rooms and while she was searching for music on the radio. The Joker, possibly Gotham's most-feared criminal, and she was in an unknown location with him. And he had just killed a woman - one Bear knew fairly well - and he had cited her as one of the reasons why. After that particular group of revelations, it was easy to let her mind fade back into the comforting darkness that waited to envelop her.

The next thing Bear was aware of was her mind swimming closer to the surface. As she finally broke that mental surface, Bear tried to move her limbs, but quickly discovered that they were strapped down beside her body, which also wouldn't move. Honestly, that may have been an effect from whatever she had been drugged with, but either way, she was left with a lack of ability to move.

"Well, well… Finally, our Sleeping Beauty graces us with her presence!"

Bear winced at Mr- _The Joker's_ loud announcement. Her head was still a bit tender, but his voice wasn't the only factor: bright lights were pointed directly at her face, and even cracking her eyelids open was nearly too much for Bear.

The Joker seemed characteristically unconcerned with her discomfort. "Oh, boys! Time to bring in the machines. Ya see," his voice seemed closer now, but Bear still couldn't make much out past the glare of the lights, "I have all kinds of fun waiting for ya. Call it… heh, a little welcome for you. Because I'm _such_ a good friend, ya know?"

Bear swallowed the questions crowding her dry throat, not wanting to give the Joker any more of the fear he seemed to feed on. Of course, this left her with an awkward lack of things to say or do and she didn't want to risk enraging the Joker by making him believe she was ignoring him. After all, it seemed that she was now entirely at his mercy, a dangerous place if he was in a good mood. To purposely anger him now would be akin to signing her own death warrant.

Fortunately, the silence was filled by the noises of what seemed to be a handful of large men shuffling into the room and assembling something made up of a lot of small metal parts. While they worked, the Joker circled the metal table Bear was strapped to. She still couldn't see him especially well, but he was humming all the while and she could keep a general idea of his location. Eventually, he stopped by her head, leaning in slightly so that she was looking up at his pale face and crazed eyes.

"Oh, my little Teddy Bear," the Joker sighed gleefully. "The things I have planned for ya…"

"What are your plans?" Bear asked, finally cracking and asking one of her many cliché questions. She went about it carefully, however, pushing out her chin in a manner she hoped showed how unafraid she was trying to be while masking the terror she scarcely held in check.

Once again, he hummed softly for a moment, watching his people finish setting up whatever was going in the corner. "Ya know how I feel about questions. I don't usually answer 'em, especially when the one asking is strapped to a table and completely under my power, but-" he paused, turning to survey her with maliciously-gleaming eyes, "-when they're asked with such a tremble in the voice, such fear in the eyes… Well, call me a softie! I just can't... heh, help myself." His gaze turned - if possible - even more predatory as his tone darkened. "My plans? Well, little girl, I'm going to see if the Teddy Bear can be turned into a Grizzly."


	2. Do You Want Me (Dead)?

The Joker watched as his Teddy Bear pulled slightly against her bonds. It was of no use, of course; the ropes were tied far too tightly to allow any chance of escape. When her movements finally faded away to nothing and her muscles went slack, he pulled his hand from her throat, taking one last moment to enjoy the sight of his pale fingers against her bronze skin. The wide, tattooed smile on the back of his hand gaped in the low light, looking for all the world like he had slit her throat. He moved away and the illusion was ruined, but he was left with something better: a perfect view of his finally-finished masterpiece.

Little Bear had run the torture gauntlet. He had been methodical, taking careful note of what things affected her deeply and which ones she seemed able to withstand. He had used the typical methods like near-drownings and systematic beatings, and perhaps invented a few new tortures - who would have guessed that popping every joint in the human body would turn out to be such a torment? There was one thing he would not budge on, however: The Joker never continued with an activity after Bear lost consciousness.

In every other case of torture he had experienced - and there had been many - the promise offered by a lack of feeling, of awareness, had proven to be too much for a victim. After a few sessions, they would reach for the slackening of their mind with greater and greater speed, eventually succumbing only a short amount of time after the pain had started.

Not so with Bear.

After only their third session, Bear had begun to grow noticeably stronger, crying out less and less until she withstood every horror he inflicted in resolute silence. Soon, she grew immune even to his harshest techniques save for one: Bear seemed to have a deeply-ingrained fear of suffocation. Of course, most humans had this fear. Nothing caused more panic and thrashing than the abrupt cutoff of one's air supply, but such a noticeable weakness in so strong a woman grabbed the Joker's attention, and he exploited it until even that fear began to fade.

At first, his Teddy Bear would sob and plead and offer to tell him anything he wanted to know - not that there was anything he would ask. No, it was cheating to enter someone's mind using information gleaned from torture. The Joker preferred to crack his victims the old-fashioned way. In the end, it didn't matter. During their most recent session, Bear had suffered carefully-measured doses of suffocation without speaking, begging, or even struggling more than the body would permit.

The Joker had gone digging in the mind of his fascinating new toy and had been delighted to discover that Bear - despite all of her outward softness - had a core of pure steel. Despite his best efforts, she didn't break... and the best efforts of the Joker were definitely worth consideration.

Now, there was just one final test she needed to pass, and his plans were that it would take place very shortly. Now that he had taken the time to forge his new toy, the Joker didn't intend to wait long before playing with it.

* * *

An indeterminable amount of time after the darkness consumed her vision, Bear woke to the sound of a siren going off. The choice of words was deliberate: she _woke_ to the sound, but was careful not to open her eyes. In fact, she made a concentrated effort not to move at all. Once she began to move, the torture would begin. It always did.

She had learned early on never to believe she was alone in the room and it served her well now. After several long moments of silence, broken only by the sound of the mysterious siren, Bear heard the Joker's voice crack, whip-like, from his favorite corner. "Frosty, go check out that pesky alarm for me, wouldja?"

"Yes, boss," came Jonny's efficient rumble, then came the sound of a door opening and closing.

"Now, little Teddy Bear," the Joker drawled, voice sickly-sweet with false caring dripping from every word. "I know you're awake and I wanna prepare ya for what might be happening out there. That alarm is used for only a few things, most often for Batsy himself. Maybe someone finally caught wind of ya being gone and decided to alert the Winged Menace."

Bear still didn't open her eyes, even when she heard the Joker draw closer and her muscles began a fine tremble. "I needja to promise that you'll stay here. There's gonna be a lot going on real soon, and I wouldn't want ya to get… heh, lost in the shuffle." Here, he laid his hand on her throat - not squeezing, not yet, but enough to serve as a warning.

With what must have been his other hand, the Joker reached up and pried her eyelid open, leaning down to address her from less of a distance than he had been. "I'm gonna need ya to agree or nod or something, otherwise, I'm gonna have to put ya out until he's gone."

Trying desperately to convince herself that spitting in her torturer's face was a bad idea (it certainly hadn't worked out well last time), Bear forced out a slight nod. It was nothing more than a brief incline and decline of her head, but it seemed to satisfy the Joker. He patted her roughly on the cheek - a feeling that was less-than pleasant with the deep bruise she could still feel - but then he was gone and Bear breathed a sigh of relief.

Left alone with her thoughts, Bear stared up past the blinding lamp to the darkened ceiling above. It seemed rather stupid of the Joker to put so much effort into making her promise not to leave. After all, she was tied to a table and had no option but to stay where she was. As if to prove to herself that this was true, Bear gave a little tug against the ropes on her wrists and ankles, jerking back and staring around the room as much as possible when they moved.

When no one jumped out and began beating her for daring to move, Bear pulled again, relishing in the feeling of sudden freedom after such a long time in confinement. Her bonds were loose - not untied altogether, but it certainly didn't take her long to free first one wrist, then the other. Bear reached down with shaking fingers and began untying her ankles.

It was finally done and Bear leapt from the table - or, at least, she tried to. After so much time spent lying in one place, her muscles were weak, and even the heady kick of adrenaline could only do so much. Despite the stuttering of her steps, Bear retreated as far from the place of her torture as she could and stared sightlessly at the door. No one had returned yet, but she didn't know how much time she had left until they did.

Bear wasn't stupid, even with the constant surges of desperation softening her processing skills. If the Joker had made her promise to stay here, it meant that this was a test. The only question was, was Batman really there? If so, everyone would be busy fighting and Bear actually stood a chance of escape. If not, there were far greater odds that Bear would attempt to leave the room only to find herself facing a firing squad or worse: the Joker himself. _Besides_ , she thought logically, _there's every chance the door is locked._

In a few short steps, Bear had crossed the room and was trying the knob. Sure enough, it was locked. She slumped, ready to cry at the frustrated thought of having to return to the table, endure more torture, spend every second of her day at the mercy of a man who had none. _You did promise you would stay_ , a little voice reminded her. _Besides, he hasn't killed you yet. Maybe if you show that you can follow orders, he won't do it at all._

Bear let out a snort at the voice's attempted logic. _That makes no sense_ , she told it, trying not to think about the fact that she was having a conversation with her own brain. _He's a maniacal monster who has tortured me around the clock for who-knows-how-long. More than likely, he would come back, laugh at me for staying here, and kill me anyway._ She shook her head. She was getting out of there.

Going back to the table, Bear took a moment to study the ropes that had been used to keep her still. They were ropes, yes, but flat ropes, black and thick. Noting the length, Bear wound two of them around her feet, forming them into a type of shoe. They weren't elegant, but they would be far better than dicing her feet on any broken glass present. Batman didn't fight neatly. The other two, she used to wrap around her knuckles, hoping they would protect her if she had to hit someone. She wished there was anything present that could be used as clothing, but it was of no matter. She could probably make an escape better naked than if she was constantly trying to adjust or hold up a sheet or something equally as unwieldy.

Balancing carefully on one of her rope-shod feet, Bear kicked sharply at the electro-shock machine that had been set up on her first day in the room. The blow was enough to break loose a solid-looking canister that proved to be quite heavy. Bear gripped it carefully and made her way back to the door before bringing it down as hard as she could on the hinges of the door. The middle one fell away quite easily, snapping with a sound that would wake the dead, and Bear worked faster. The bottom hinge was even easier, gravity working with her to bring the canister down with an incredible force, but the top hinge was by far the most difficult. It was a trick trying to get the canister raised even that far, and Bear spent precious moments trying to figure out a solution before an even easier one came to her: she pushed against the bottom of the door where the two missing hinges were and the door obligingly pulled far enough away from the frame for her to slip through.

The hallway was thankfully deserted, and some of the desperate, trembling nervousness of Bear's muscles began to fade as her confidence grew. With a small surge of pride, she noted that the door looked almost exactly as it had before, something she hoped would buy her precious time when the Joker returned to continue her torture. After a split second of deliberation, Bear turned and jogged lightly down the hallway away from the noise. As much easier as it would be to get rescued by Batman rather than attempt escape on her own, she couldn't take the risk that he would consider her to be part of the Joker's group and thus worthy of a bullet.

She made her way carefully down the hall. Gunshots echoed from the cavernous room at the other end and she moved a little faster, staying as close to the wall as possible. Every door she tried was locked, but she didn't bother trying to kick any down. None of them looked as though they would lead out and that was her main goal.

All of a sudden, one wall edged away from the hall and Bear found herself looking at a small counter built into the wall itself. Resting innocently on the surface was a cell phone, looking to be similar to the ones she had seen both Jonny and the Joker use. There was every chance it belonged to a guard who had unthinkingly left it behind, or it had been dropped and placed up where no one would kick it, or any one of a thousand other innocent explanations. It would make things so much easier that Bear's hands nearly itched to pick it up, but she restrained herself. Knowing the Joker as she had come to over her time being held by him, there were far too many nasty things that could happen, and she forced herself to move on.

* * *

Far up in the security office, the Joker leaned into the screen, generously ignoring as the guard watching the camera feeds edged a few inches away. The guard had been foolish enough to try directing Joker's attention to the scuffle between his men and those working for the Penguin, but he paid no attention. This was something he and the other so-called villains of Gotham engaged in quite frequently. They attacked the others' hideouts and tried to kill as many men as possible. There were no repercussions for these actions between the heads of the various organizations. After all, constant battles kept the men sharp, and if they couldn't fight, what was the point of keeping them on the payroll?

No, the Joker had made it exceedingly clear from the moment he entered the office that the only battle he cared about was that of Bear trying to leave his hideout. He had ordered the guard to switch from views of the larger fight - which the Penguin's men appeared to be winning _again_ , damn it - to the cameras covering the hallway that Bear's room opened to. Long minutes had passed sluggishly by as he waited for her to make an appearance, wondering more than once if he had made a mistake and she was indeed fully broken - far too broken to be of use to him.

However, Bear eventually made her way out. She didn't break the door down as he had expected her to do, instead appearing to remove the hinges from the inside and slip out, leaving the door propped up and seemingly untouched. It was nicely done, and he cheered internally. She was as naked as he had left her, but had wrapped the ropes that bound her around her hands and feet. It was another nice touch.

As for the final test, Bear had hesitated long enough to make him doubt her, but had eventually chosen to move away from the battle. It was smart and proved to him that her mind was still her own. She moved down the hallway to find the present he had left, carefully placed near enough to a camera so that he could watch the wheels turning in her mind.

"Come on, baby," he murmured, watching the screen intently as she waffled, trying to decide whether the phone was worth the risk. It was a false phone, of course, and the moment she picked it up, it would deliver a powerful electric shock and she would be knocked unconscious once more, ready to be put back in her room so he could finish telling her the rules of the game.

No one had ever passed the lure of the phone, so Joker was entirely floored when Bear turned away without even picking up the electronic. The guard glanced nervously from the screen to Joker's face, eyes showing entirely too much white, and asked, "Do you want me to send some guys over there to stop her, boss?"

"No need," he assured the man. "No one's gotten past the phone before, but I've had a contingency plan set up just in case." The man looked confused and the Joker sighed. Oh, henchmen of little faith. "All the doors in this hallway are locked except for one, the one that looks like it leads outside. But, it actually leads to a smaller hallway that fills with an aerated chloroform that'll knock her right out as soon as she's inside. Just watch."

The two turned back to the camera feed, still tracking Bear's progress as she made her way down the hall. She stopped unexpectedly four doors away from the booby-trapped one. "What are you doing, Teddy Bear?" Joker asked rhetorically as she raised her tightly-bound foot and kicked something once- twice- and… "What is that, Joe?"

The guard, newly-christened as Joe, leaned even closer to the screen, narrowing his eyes until… "I think it's a ventilation shaft."

The two watched, awestruck, as Bear pulled the metal screen off, slid inside, and popped her head back out to prop it against the wall, once more leaving her escape route fairly-unnoticeable.

Joker burst out laughing. "This girl is really something, isn't she? I think she musta seen _Die Hard_ too many times. That air shaft doesn't go anywhere important. Right, Joe?"

'Joe' frowned. "I don't think so, boss. It should end up on the third floor of the blank wall."

The Joker nodded in satisfaction. The blank wall was what they called the side of the building where the surrounding area was lower than at any other point. There was a thick forest on that side, but there would be no way for Bear to get down to it. The shaft leading out to the third floor meant that she would be roughly thirty feet in the air with no pipes to cling to or balconies to parkour down with. In short, his little Teddy Bear would have no choice but to turn around and come back the same way she had gone out: in his power.

After a bit of self-congratulatory silence, the Joker got an uneasy feeling. These were rare, but when they happened, he always listened. And they always panned out. "Joe, do we have cameras on the blank wall?"

"Uhh, one," he answered after some deliberation. "It's mostly just used to keep an eye on the forest, though."

"Do me a favor and see if it'll turn far enough to see the end of that ventilation shaft." Joe looked concerned and Joker clapped him on the shoulder. "I wanna see the look on her face when she realizes she's trapped."

Joe obligingly circled through the camera options until he got to the one facing the forest, then began rotating it enough to see the grate that capped the narrow passage Bear was currently working through. With some careful maneuvering of angles, he even managed to zoom in a bit without losing any focus or clarity.

In less than a minute, the grate was kicked out and went soaring down to the ground. Bear's head peeked out a moment later, staring down at the sheer drop with a look of frustration on her face. The Joker chuckled as she pushed her hair back, but cut off as she stared down at her hand thoughtfully. He frowned. "She's not gonna…"

He trailed off as Bear began unwinding the rope from both hands and knotting it together, then did the same with her feet. The Joker cursed vividly, attracting Joe's attention. "Do we have a fence along the forest over there?"

"No, sir," he confirmed. "You said you didn't want the view impeded in your-"

He cut off abruptly as the Joker shot him in the face. Joe slumped forward, a thin trickle of blood making its way down the neat hole in his temple to drip on the keyboard. "Even in death, you're useless," the Joker quipped, pushing the guard's body out of the chair and rescuing the keyboard from the forming puddle.

Keeping his gaze firmly on Bear, Joker pulled his cell phone from his pocket and speed-dialed Frost. It took nearly six rings before he gave up and began flicking through cameras until he found the one in the main room of his hideout, the room where the battle was currently taking place. Sure enough, all the henchmen he had were busy fighting off the Penguin's men. Joker cursed the Penguin and his timing, following it up with useless henchmen and the situation in general before jogging off to deal with the Bear issue himself.

* * *

Bear sat perched on the edge of the metal tube she had crawled through, trying her best to ignore the drop next to her. Heights weren't her best thing, but anything beat staying to be tortured by the Joker some more, even falling to her death. Fortunately, the ropes that had been used to tie her hands were overkill by quite a bit. Not only were they thick enough to easily hold her weight, but each one looked to be nearly three feet long. As she worked on securing the ropes into one long cord, Bear talked to herself, trying to keep calm considering what she was about to attempt.

"Okay, this is the third floor, so it's a thirty-foot drop. You're sitting at the bottom of third floor, actually, so it's more like twenty feet. If these are three-foot rope sections and you don't use too much up by tying them, this cord will be ten or eleven feet long. That means there's, at most, a ten-foot drop at the bottom before you're free. Ten feet. People can fall ten feet and still live. They can fall ten feet and still move just fine. It'll be okay. It's not even ten feet! If you hang on to the very end of the rope, that subtracts your height from the fall. It's less than a five-foot drop, then. You can definitely do this. The trick is just getting down."

Through all of her chattering, Bear had tied all the ropes together, tightening each knot carefully until she was sure they would hold. The last thing she did was form the first rope into a loop at the very top, hooking it around a gapped slice of metal about the thickness of her waist near the very edge and thanking the Joker's building crew the whole time. Their terrible installation job would save her life if this held. It would hold. It had to.

Before she could chicken out, Bear had moved beyond her comfortable little ledge and was dangling outside the building. She had done rope-climbing in a gym class once, but that was forever ago and her muscles were fatigued besides. Even with her bare feet carefully gripping the rope, Bear didn't climb down so much as she did a controlled slide down to each new knot until she was dangling from the bottom. From there, it was simple to drop down to the ground - mostly because her arms refused to grip the smooth rope any longer.

As soon as Bear's feet touched the solid ground, she was sprinting into the treeline with everything she had. "Bear!" a voice roared. Bear didn't look back. She knew it was the Joker and knew that he was fairly close with the lack of echo the shout had held.

She dodged trees and underbrush, quickly working her way into the depths of the forest while trying to be as quiet as possible. Her feet hit a soft, gushing mass and Bear looked down to find herself standing near a small pond. The water looked fresh enough, but she wasn't going to risk drinking it. _Besides,_ she thought, remembering all of the survival shows her brother had forced her to watch growing up. _This has other possibilities._

Bear worked her hair into a tight braid before scooping up massive handfuls of mud to smooth over her skin. It helped that, with her Native American heritage, she was naturally tan, but there was still a lot of skin to cover since she wore exactly no clothing at the moment. She used a few large, strategically-placed leaves to cover the more sensitive areas that she didn't want to scrape mud out of later, but ended up having to coat all of her hair with the paste-like stuff as well. While the mud layer was still damp, Bear moved to an area with thick underbrush, dropped to the ground, and rolled, taking care to pick up as many leaf shreds, small twigs, and pebbles as possible.

As she finished the process - kicking more underbrush into the now suspiciously-bare spot she had rolled in - Bear heard crunching footsteps and knew her time was running out. She darted a little further away from the noise and finally settled on a spot between a downed tree and a bush. Bear pulled a large limb closer to her and sank as far back into the bush as she could, praying there were no poisonous plants in the area as she closed her eyes. This was the most nerve-wracking part, but her eyes could very well give her away, and she had been sure to put a mud layer on her eyelids as well.

The last step was to slow her breathing and heartbeat as much as possible before the person she presumed to be the Joker skidded into the area. Bear felt very quiet indeed compared to him. His panting breaths and cracking of every stick he came across… one could hear him from miles off. Fortunately, he didn't even stop in her clearing, but continued on. Bear took careful note of his direction and waited for several long minutes before opening her eyes.

When she warily cracked her eyelids open, the clearing was empty. Bear eased out of her spot and began moving as swiftly as possible away from both the Joker and his lair. Thankfully, she was lucky enough to find first a campsite with no people in it - she took time to scrawl a warning in the dirt about their proximity to evil things and advised them to relocate - followed by a healthy river, more than enough to wash most of the dried and cracking mud from her skin and hair. The best surprise of all was that one of the camp residents must have been pushed into the water because there were a variety of clothes strewn across the river's bank to dry. Bear guiltily took a windbreaker and a damp pair of jeans that were roughly the right size and kept moving, following the river until she got to the very edges of the city.

With an even stronger surge of guilt, Bear realized that there was a crumpled ten-dollar bill in the pocket of her adopted windbreaker and she quickly hailed a cab. The driver acted like she was crazy for asking the date and time, but Bear didn't pay much attention. She spent most of the ride adding up the time she had been away. She had been kidnapped on a Monday and it seemed to be Friday of the next week. Thirteen days in total. Thirteen. It was an odd number, very distinctive for the Joker. For what was far from the first time, Bear wondered if she had been allowed to escape on purpose.

The taxi dropped her off exactly as she had requested, in front of the building where she worked. Doing her best to avoid drawing unnecessary attention, Bear strode to the office of Margaret - 'call me Maggie' - Moore, her immediate supervisor. Maggie was a Godsend, definitely Bear's favorite part of working in the Gotham branch.

Bear slipped through Maggie's door, having successfully snuck past her secretary, and waited for the woman to finish speaking on the phone. "Yes, I know we have deadlines to meet, but our workforce has experienced an alarming dip and we may need additional time to-" As Maggie pushed long, wavy hair behind her ear, her blues eyes met Bear's brown gaze and she stopped short.

"I- I'll call you back. I know. I _know_. Goodbye." Maggie set the phone in its cradle with a little more force than was necessary, but it was disguised by the way she sprung up and grabbed Bear in a tight hug. "Bear! You're alive! I never thought I would see you again!"

Trying not to wonder if her boss was crying, Bear patted Maggie on the back. "I know I've been gone a while, but you thought I was dead?"

"Everyone else is!" Maggie choked out, most-definitely crying now. Bear was too shocked to speak, but Maggie responded to the question on her face. "Yes, Haven, Gina, Amanda… Most of the girls who work in our office disappeared on the same night. Their bodies were found two days ago. The only ones unaccounted for were the two of you who disappeared on Monday: You and Chelsea, and her body was found yesterday, completely mangled. She was almost unrecognizable."

Bear spoke quickly before Maggie could completely dissolve into sobs. "Don't feel too bad about Chelsea. From what I could figure out, she's the reason everyone else was murdered." It was Maggie's turn to stare, wide-eyed with a question on her face. Bear nodded, "She was delivering a group of women to a really sick man, the one who did this."

"And that's where you were?" Maggie asked, horror in her voice. "Do you know who it was?"

"I know exactly who," Bear answered grimly. "The Joker."

As if the name flicked a switch inside of her, all traces of Maggie's tears left her face and she stood, walking rapidly but confidently over to the large bank of windows in the room. In a swift movement, she had drawn the blinds and came back over to perch on the edge of her desk.

"The Joker had you. And you escaped? Surely he wouldn't have just let you go."

"Yes, I escaped," Bear said warily, wondering for a wild moment if Maggie was in the Clown's employ.

"Well, it doesn't look like he's found you yet, but it's hard to be sure. We need to get you out of here. Are you comfortable with me handling everything? I can put a transfer through, effective immediately, and you can have your old job back. You should be safe there. Even the Joker doesn't have contacts everywhere."

"That… actually sounds really perfect," Bear agreed. "I feel stupid even asking this, but do I need to file a police report or anything like that?"

"You can, but they'll want to know who had you, where you were, and so on. Plus, if you tell them the truth, they'll want your help in taking him down. They'll probably bring in Batman, as well. It's really up to you."

"Honestly?" Bear blew out a breath. "I don't want to be involved. I just want to go back to Dallas and live my life. As long as I still have a job, I'll just cash my chips and get the hell out of here."

Maggie turned to her computer, typing in rapid-fire bursts. "I'm putting it in the system retroactively that you left to take care of a family emergency and were given two weeks of paid leave. Later tonight, I'll put that transfer through, citing the same family emergency."

"Maggie," Bear trailed, utterly floored. "You're absolutely the best. Thank you so much."

"You don't have to thank me," Maggie waved off, "but you are about to think I've even better than the best. I can print off your most recent paycheck here and I know we have enough in the petty cash fund to cover it. Endorse the check and I'll make sure you have enough to get a plane ticket back to Dallas." She paused. "You weren't planning to drive, right?"

Bear shivered, thinking over the incredibly long and nerve-wracking drive that would turn out to be. "And get stopped by one of the Joker's roadblocks or kidnapped at a rest stop? No, thanks. The cash sounds wonderful and I'll go straight to the airport."

"Well, maybe not _straight_ there…" Maggie trailed. Bear quirked an eyebrow and her boss frowned. "Are you wearing anything under that windbreaker?"

"No, but that's a good point. I can't go back to my apartment. I know someone will be watching it." Bear sat for a moment, thinking over the situation. "Wait! Before Chelsea talked us all into going to the club, I had a workout planned. My bag is still under my desk with an entire outfit inside. It'll look a little odd, but it's clean and actually mine, so whatever."

Maggie held out a hand to stop Bear before she could leave the office. "Hang on, Bear. Everyone thinks you're dead. Why don't I go get your bag so no one leaves here talking about your miraculous reappearance and how I doctored your excuse."

Bear thanked the woman again, but Maggie just smiled sadly. "Don't thank me. I'm keeping myself from getting in trouble. Besides, I remember a time when I would have given anything for someone to help me this way. Just think of it as me doing something I wish someone could have done for me if it helps. Wait right here and I'll get your bag."

Bear watched her friend leave, thinking over the flat, silvery scar that ran from just under Maggie's eye, over her cheek, and off the side of her face at an angle that made clear what had happened to the missing section of her earlobe. Maggie's husband had been cruel in the worst possible way, and no one mourned when he had been announced missing, then dead. The changes in Maggie since his death had been fantastic and Bear was proud of the strength her leader was gaining.

Before she could really grasp everything that was going on, Bear had changed, gotten her money, and traveled to the airport. Even better, things had lined up so that she was on the next flight to Dallas, one leaving only an hour after she had checked for tickets. It was a crowded flight, and she found herself next to an overly-comfortable mother who spent all of her time yelling at the children seated on her other side. That was fine with Bear.

When the plane took off, the force of the engines pressed her back into her seat with a feeling of breathless weightlessness. The feeling relaxed as they leveled off just below the cloud cover, and Bear stared out the window at the foggy grayness of Gotham. A tear slipped down her cheek before she could stop it. Something she had buried screamed to go back, that she belonged in Gotham.

She tried her best to shake the feeling off. In her logical mind, Bear knew the feeling was a product of Stockholm Syndrome, helped along by the intense psychological torture she had undergone while in the Joker's custody. She was going back home. Back to where she belonged. She glanced out the window one last time, letting herself give Gotham a single nod in goodbye. Bear wouldn't be coming back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Further explanation of the chapter titles: they're all songs that make me think of the Joker as I listen to them - some in title, some due to the lyrics. Also, the natural camouflage Bear uses in the woods is a real thing. Far more detailed instructions may be found on a number of wilderness websites.


	3. You're Gonna Go Far, Kid

Bear stood outside of her childhood home, staring up at the window to the room she had shared with her sister. Memories chased themselves around her mind, but all of them offered a better escape than obsessing over her time with the Clown Prince, but rather than just let her thoughts take her away, Bear chose to walk up to the door and knock.

She still had keys to her mother's house, of course. If nothing else, it helped Victoria Wells pretend that all of her children still lived at home. The reality of her life as a so-called 'empty nester' hadn't truly set in yet. That was an impressive feat, to Bear's way of thinking, as the youngest of the Wells children had moved out nearly three years ago.

It had been an unpleasant sensation, to reach for her keys and find nothing there, but of course, the dripping wad of keys was somewhere in the Joker's lair and Bear hadn't had time to grab her spare set. Not that it really mattered, because only seconds after Bear knocked on her mother's door, it was pulled open by a wonderfully familiar-looking figure.

"Baroness!" her mother cried, wrapping her in a hug.

Choking back relieved tears, Bear laughed. "How have you been, Mom?"

"Not important," Victoria waved off. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course," she lied, but Victoria was having none of it.

Pulling back from their hug, she fixed Bear with the 'You're Going To Be In Trouble' look she remembered so vividly from her childhood. "Don't lie to me, Baroness! How are you really?"

Bear furrowed her brows at her mother. Now that she thought about it, Victoria had seemed happy to see her daughter, but not surprised. "Okay, Mom. What do you know and who told you?"

"I don't know what you mean," Victoria said archly. "I haven't spoken to anyone, really. Should I have?" She and Bear stared at each other for a long moment before she added in an apparent change in subject, "You know, I really like your boss, that Margaret. She seems like such a nice girl."

"What exactly did she tell you?" Bear asked in defeat.

"Not nearly as much as I wish she had, but more than enough to make me worried. I am being completely serious, Baroness. You can feel free to talk to me about anything."

Though Bear had felt better since arriving in Dallas - something to do with the unrelenting light beating down from the sun perhaps - a chill went up her spine at the idea of sharing the Joker's evil with her mother. The chill was quickly followed by a wave of sadness and desperation to cling to Victoria and embrace the type of peace she vaguely remembered from her childhood.

"Mom," she started, fighting to keep her voice from quavering, "I was kidnapped by a very bad man. I don't want to say anything else about who he is because he's dangerous. I don't want him thinking you're a loose end he needs to tie up. Though I'm probably the biggest loose end he has at the moment," Bear added as an afterthought. "He hurt me, Mom. These were the longest two weeks of my life, and I've never been happier not to be somewhere. I don't really know what to say beyond that."

"As long as you know I'll always have a friendly ear, a non-judgemental mind, and a shoulder to cry on if you change your mind, I'll let that explanation count." Bear nodded and Victoria, seeming to sense that her daughter needed a solid dose of normalcy, began to talk about Bear's siblings and their various goings-on.

The Wells family was fairly large compared to the average American ideal. Viscount was the oldest, a sports manager mainly located in the Houston area. To make himself sound a little more tough than 'Viscount' made him seem, Bear's oldest brother preferred to go simply by Vic. Next in the line was Archduke, or Duke, as he called himself. Duke had been the wild child, moving to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of starting a band, playing the guitar, and becoming successful. At the moment, Duke's band was popular, but more bar-crowd than sports-stadium. Bear herself was the older of the two girls, leaving only her younger sister Duchess. Duchess - Dutch for short - was the real girly-girl of the family, touring the world as a prominent fashion designer despite her sometimes-overwhelming shyness. She was quite talented and almost universally liked, a rarity in the fashion world.

Victoria Wells was the best mother her four children could ever have hoped for. Their father had been somewhat absentee; somewhat being defined as 'staying until after Dutch's birth before disappearing completely'. The boys remembered him fairly well, but all Bear and Dutch had to go off of was his name, Hakan Castillo, and the knowledge that he was mostly Native American.

Victoria herself was the polar opposite of her children, all of whom had inherited Hakan's bronze skin and dark eyes and hair. Victoria, on the other hand, was a tall, slender woman with honey-blonde hair and violet-blue eyes. Being named after a legendary British monarch, Victoria had grown up with an interest in history and that had carried over to her choice of major. Bear's mother had graduated at the top of her class with a doctorate in History, specializing in the lives and traditions of the British monarchy. Now, she taught European history at a college in the Dallas area, supporting her children as well as she could from the moment their father had left.

Currently chatting about Duchess, at a fashion show in Milan, Victoria realized Bear was sweating. "Come on, honey. Let's get you inside. It's too hot of a day to be standing out here."

Truthfully, it was a hot day, but that wasn't the reason the sweat was rolling down her forehead. Standing out in the open for such an extended period of time was making her shoulders tense and a spot between her shoulder blades itch. Bear wasn't stupid. She knew the Joker would come after her sooner or later. She knew too much, and he had too many sources waiting to report where she had gone. Bear only came to put herself back together and warn her mother about what was coming. The only tough part was bursting the bubble of comfort and stepping away from the false sense of security that was forming so quickly.

The following days were tough for Bear. She told herself she was recovering, and that's certainly what Victoria believed was happening. However, somewhere between the self-defense lessons (Bear had managed to find an all-female class that still challenged her) and the hours of practice at the gun range, Bear admitted to herself that her 'recovery' had more of a sense of preparation. Why else would she be driven to get every vaccination she had access to?

Eventually, Bear cornered her mother. "Do you have a minute?"

"Always, Baroness. I told you I would be here whenever you need to talk and I meant it."

Bear took a quavering breath. It was surprisingly difficult to talk to Victoria about all of this, to talk about it at all. It had been nearly a month since she left the Joker's compound, but she still experienced almost daily flashbacks, often in the form of random surges of adrenaline. "Mom, the- the man who took me… He's not a good guy. He's about as bad as he can get."

Victoria nodded, serenity on her face. "Any man who could kidnap a daughter of mine must be a truly evil one."

"No, Mom, I just don't think you get it. He's probably going to come after me." She gave a bitter laugh, pretending not to notice the look of concern that crossed Victoria's face. "He might have already come after me. I've been watching, but he's good at attacking when you least expect it."

"Baroness, honey…" Bear's stomach twisted sharply at the genuine concern and soft pity on her mother's face. "Have you considered talking to someone about how you feel?"

Bear wanted to sigh her frustration, but she couldn't truly fault her mother. Violence on this scale had never touched her life - any of their lives, until Bear's recent experience. Victoria meant well, but she just couldn't grasp the concept of danger on this level. The Joker was a terrorist, plain and simple, but once he was obsessed with something, that was his main focus. It had been that way with Batman and now a similar obsession with Bear had started. She wanted to believe that the Joker's interest would fade, but she had a nasty feeling it would end only when she broke.

Bear didn't want to break.

At Victoria's urging, Bear went to go see a practicing psychologist in the heart of Dallas. It had taken almost a week to get in contact with Sara Owens, an old friend of Bear's from high school. She was a woman who made everyone she met think 'clean-cut'. Her straight brown hair hung neatly to her collar while staying short enough not to get snagged on her crisply-pressed button-down shirt or her pristine black blazer. She often went without jewelry or makeup, leaving little to distract the eye from her soft, uniform features.

"Why, Bear Wells, how have you been? Last I heard, you moved somewhere to progress in your job. What brings you back to Dallas?"

Bear hadn't been able to speak to her old friend about such a touchy subject over the phone (especially since she wasn't sure if any of the phones she could use had been tapped), but she summoned all of her will to speak bluntly. "I'm running away from my problems, Sara. I got into a bit of a mess back in Gotham and this seemed like the best way to handle things."

"Can you elaborate on that?" Sara asked, switching to therapy mode.

Grimacing, Bear said as blandly as possible, "I was kidnapped and tortured by the man who calls himself the Joker. I was at his mercy for thirteen days before I escaped, but I'm worried he's going to be coming after me."

It wasn't often one got to shock a woman who was a doctor of psychology, but Sara stood gaping at Bear for a long moment. Uncomfortable as she was, Bear still did her best to savor the feeling. There were good odds she wasn't going to get to do that again anytime soon.

When Sara finally found her voice, she beckoned Bear over toward the couch. "How about you come and sit down for a minute so we can really talk?"

After Bear finally set aside her guilt at the idea of burdening her friend, she unloaded everything. Every detail of her surroundings, every method of torture the Joker invoked, and her reactions to each. When she had finally finished speaking and Sara stopped scribbling in her notebook, the room was silent.

"Um, there's one more thing," Bear said hesitantly. Sara looked up at her, somehow managing to raise a single eyebrow without looking judgmental. "When I first met the Joker in his club, he asked me for my name and I- well, I sort of gave him yours. He didn't believe me, and he actually knew my name before. He was just testing me, but I still feel like I should let you know, just in case. Also, I'm sorry. I panicked and you were the first one I thought of."

Sara sat for a moment, seeming completely nonplussed, but soon began laughing. "I'm not mad, Bear. I think it's funny, actually." The psychologist looked down at her notes before saying with an air of conclusion, "I understand your feelings of danger, Bear, I really do. However, I don't believe you have any real reason to fear that the man who abused you is coming back." She shuffled papers around, cutting off Bear's protests. "You need to find someone to speak to about all of this with some form of regularity. It doesn't have to be me if you aren't comfortable with that, but you need to remember that you've been through a traumatic event. If you don't find a healthy way to work through everything, you'll be in danger of finding other, potentially-unsafe methods of coping."

Sara finally looked up, making intense eye contact with Bear. "Other than the continued concern for a slip in your recovery from this event, you've come out of the whole experience remarkably healthy. That's speaking psychologically, of course, but I assume you've already seen a physician to make sure everything is okay physically?"

"Definitely," Bear assured. "And I'll work on finding someone to talk to about everything. Thank you so much, Sara. For everything."

Ignoring the politely-offered hand, Sara moved in for a hug and Bear tried to hide her flinch. She had been dealing with an ever-increasing hesitancy where physical touch was concerned, but Sara thankfully didn't seem to notice.

On her drive back to her mother's house, Bear had an odd moment of clarity. She wasn't improving, she was getting worse. Every night, it was more difficult to fall asleep, and it seemed she woke up every five minutes to lie stiffly terrified at a random noise. She could hardly stand to go out in public anymore because she was so worried about being followed, and she was in constant contact with her siblings - with the exception of Dutch, who was fairly cut off from the family as she was still in Milan.

Bear's paranoia even extended to completely random happenstances. Only the day before her therapy session, Bear had received a text message from an unfamiliar phone number. It had only said, _Hey_ , but it had been enough to send her almost into a complete panic attack. She had responded, asking who the other party was and waited, wracked with nerves so intense she felt sick. When she got another message, it was an apology and an explanation that it was a Jason looking for his friend Gideon, whose number had been mis-typed into the phone.

Even so innocent an incident was enough to throw off Bear's entire day, and no amount of weapons training or hand-to-hand coaching was enough to remove the lingering sense of insecurity. Sometimes, it felt like Bear could hardly breathe with the fear constantly crushing her chest.

Things didn't improve over the following days. Every time she closed her eyes, Bear saw a silver smile, framed by crimson lips, dancing behind her eyelids. When it was too quiet, she heard his voice, mumbling, laughing. She could smell his peculiar scent, even when she wasn't breathing, a disconcerting combination of spices and the coppery sharpness of blood. The blood must also have been a taste, because Bear found herself unable to taste anything else.

She knew she was being consumed by the Joker's torture. Yes, it was happening a little later than he had probably intended, but Bear was nevertheless starting to fall apart at the seams. She had never committed to a therapist, her siblings had their own lives, and Victoria seemed largely in denial about the potential for danger, so Bear had no one to confide in about her struggles.

With her somewhat shaky mental health in mind, Bear did ask her mother to change the combination lock for the gun safe. Victoria agreed, though with the strangest facial expression Bear had ever seen. So many emotions mixed together… concern, sadness, pity, hurt, confusion, all swirling in the blue of Victoria's eyes. Bear didn't check to see if the safe's combination had been changed, but after seeing her mother's reaction to the request, Bear didn't think it was necessary. She was sure the combination was different now.

The one distraction Bear had was her return to work. Her job was as boring here as it was back in Gotham, but now, Bear was making less money for her efforts. The colleagues she had been friends with before moving avoided her now, and the ones she had been less-than-friendly with had begun talking about her.

In the beginning, they had at least pretended to care about her feelings, hiding around corners and whispering that Bear must have gone through something awful if she had moved back less than six months after leaving. That courtesy soon disappeared, and rumors were soon swirling that Bear's mental health was in a decline after something had happened. What that something had been changed depending on the origin of the story, but Bear heard everything from how she had been caught with a male supervisor who had a wife to how she had been beaten and raped in an alleyway and fell into alcoholism to cope with the attack. The one thing all rumors agreed upon was that something terrible had happened and now, Bear was a danger to everyone she worked around.

"Of course," she grumbled to herself at work one day. "None of the stories could be something good, could they? Or even that I just got homesick and asked to transfer back."

"Everyone knows the fake stories are way more interesting."

Bear jumped violently and spun her chair to look in the dancing blue eyes of her coworker Rhys, who grinned and sat down in the cubicle next to hers. It was his cubicle, but he eagerly rolled back over to grin at her from a short distance away. "Did I scare ya?"

Glaring over at him, Bear let out a huffing sigh. "Shut up, Rhys. I'm just surprised you haven't requested a cubicle change yet. I'm 'dangerous', haven't you heard?"

Rhys snorted. "The only time I've ever seen you look dangerous was when you thought I stole that Snickers from your desk."

"Hey. I was looking forward to that Snickers all day! I needed it."

"You're telling me! You're not you when you're hungry," he chuckled, quoting the commercial in a deep, cheesy, faux-announcer voice.

Bear rolled her eyes, tamping down the gratitude she felt toward the normalcy of this singular coworker. "How is that project coming for you? It's due in about a week, right?"

"Ugh, work," Rhys complained. "Let's talk about something else, something more interesting." He looked over at her, blue eyes intensifying. "Let's talk about you for a little bit, hmm?"

Bear stifled a sigh. She should have known this friendship was too good to last. Bracing herself for the onslaught of questions - the answers to which would likely be reincarnated into juicy gossip to be spread around the office - Bear raised a single eyebrow at her coworker. "And? What exactly do you want to know?"

"What are your plans?"

It was unexpected, to say the least, and Bear narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. She decided that a simple, vague answer was best, at least until she could figure out his game. "Well… I plan to stay in Dallas for at least a while, build up my portfolio and try to advance in the company. If they offer me another chance for relocation, I'll probably accept. I'd like to try living somewhere other than Texas, and after last time…" she swallowed, knowing any sense for gossip would have been piqued by the reference to her failed job in Gotham, "Let's just say that I know what things to do differently."

She stopped speaking and Rhys blinked slowly. "That sounds like a good plan, and I think you have a good chance at succeeding, but I meant, 'What are your plans for tonight?'"

"Oh." Bear blushed in embarrassment, then flushed further as his question sunk in. "I- I didn't really have any plans, to be honest. Probably just go home and relax."

Rhys hummed thoughtfully. "You know what relaxes me? Going to a movie with a cute coworker, followed by some food, and maybe some dancing. What do you think? Sound relaxing enough for you?"

Bear started to refuse on reflex, but stopped herself. She hadn't been out of the house in a while, and not with anyone other than her mom or Sara. She had relaxed a bit since coming back to work, her fear about what had happened muted slightly by her annoyance with her coworkers. Besides, Rhys was very nice and made her laugh - and it didn't hurt that he was good-looking.

"You know what? Take dancing off of that list and you've got a deal."

Rhys's blue eyes warmed with a surprise that turned rapidly to excitement. "Okay. Okay, great! Should I pick you up or meet somewhere?"

"I mean, we could just go straight to the movies, if you want," Bear offered hesitantly.

To her embarrassment, Rhys immediately made a disgusted face. "I'm glad you feel fresh and ready to go on a date, but I'm going to need a little while to shower and change clothes. So, should I pick you up?"

"Why don't we just meet at the theater?" Bear said with a smile. "Give me the address and I'll meet you whatever time you want."

* * *

The next day, Bear couldn't stop smiling. Thankfully, it was a Saturday, so she didn't have to deal with making any excuses at work - though that meant she didn't have a ready-made excuse to see Rhys again - but Victoria did seem to be fairly overflowing with questions. Bear did her best to avoid her mother, though it was far more difficult than she had expected.

It seemed that Victoria was around every corner, waiting to question Bear about how her night had gone, what Rhys looked like, whether he was a gentleman, if she was going to see him again… It was nice of her mother to take such an interest, but Bear wasn't sure enough about the forming relationship to start drawing conclusions like that, much less answer questions about any of it.

Bear had a wonderful time - obviously, hence her happiness during the following day. Rhys had met her at the theater with a friendly hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was so close to his usual level of friendliness and personal contact that Bear hadn't felt intimidated at all, and he quickly led her inside, having arrived early to pay for the tickets since he 'just knew' she would try to pay. She had doubt about his movie choice, but it actually worked out surprisingly well: Rhys had opted for a reasonably-clean comedy. With a lack of uncomfortable jokes or the pressure of romantic comedies, Bear found herself thoroughly enjoying the movie, gladly accepting Rhys's warm hand as he reached for hers in the darkened theater. Afterward, they had gone to a restaurant and discussed the movie, finding that they shared most of their favorite parts.

There was only one problem: Bear couldn't shake the lingering feeling of concern for Rhys and his welfare if they continued to see each other. She was fairly confident after this long that the Joker wasn't going to come looking for her, but Bear was still wary. Rhys was a wonderful guy, and she couldn't stand the idea of putting him into danger because she chose to spend time with him.

In a bid for sanity, however, Bear pushed these feelings away and did her best to focus on the excitement and pleasure she got from thoughts of the evening spent with the man who was most definitely her favorite coworker.

Sunday ended up being a little different. Victoria was busy grading the mid-terms she had given to her classes the week before and, left to her own devices, Bear decided to go out and do some shopping. Halloween had always been one of her favorite holidays, but Victori usually just put up a wreath or placed a small stack of hay bales in the front yard. Bear knew the decorations for Halloween would be left up to her, and she was up for the challenge.

She rose early and went to her usual stores, gathering everything she would need to turn the Wells house into the most frightening one on the block. Several hours later, she was arriving back home with almost a full trunk-worth of decorations. It had been a blissful shopping trip, interrupted only by the nearly-constant ringing of her cell phone. It was a random number, likely belonging to a telemarketer or an oddly-persistent wrong number caller, so Bear didn't bother answering. Instead, she silenced her calls, turned on a playlist of her favorite Halloween songs, and let the phone play cheerfully from her back pocket while she got to work.

Several hours later, Bear stepped back to admire her work, joined moments later by Victoria. "Okay, it does look pretty good. Bad. Whichever. You did an impressive job, Baroness," the history professor congratulated.

Bear had to humbly agree with her mother's assessment. In the golden sunlight of a late afternoon in Texas, the false gravestones stood crookedly proud, waiting for passersby to read their amusing names or punny causes of death. Spiderwebs adorned with the occasional rubber spider wafted in the breeze, stopped from swinging only because their path was blocked by the caution tape liberally crossing every inch of the porch's railings. Bear had kept her mother's tradition of placing hay bales in the yard, adding a creepy, leaf-stuffed scarecrow to keep the theme. A sheaf of dried corn stalks stood nearby, a one-eyed baby doll peeking out from the thickest gathering while skeletons danced from the tree limbs overhead - some dressed in the tattered remains of a pirate's costume, a ninja suit, and even one that looked like a clown. Bear had chosen that skeleton on purpose.

"Do you think we'll scare the neighborhood kids?" Bear asked curiously.

"Probably," her mother replied. "We were always 'the scary house' when you kids were growing up."

"Oh, you don't even know the half of it!" Bear effused. "I got a strobe light, a fog machine, and a soundtrack of creepy noises we can play on Halloween night! It's going to be awesome!"

"I want to change my answer," Victoria offered. "If we get any trick-'r-treaters at all, I'll be shocked."

"More candy for us," Bear said with an unconcerned shrug, the motion quickly turning into a slight jump as her phone buzzed in her back pocket, signaling yet another call from the mysterious number. Fishing the phone from her pocket, Bear made a disgusted face as she denied the call.

"What was that?" Victoria asked curiously.

Bear shook her head. "I think it's a sales call. They've been calling me all day, but I'm not picking up."

"Didn't you just buy that phone?" Bear nodded in answer to her mother's question and Victoria frowned. "That's pretty bad that you're already getting telemarketing calls. Have you tried asking them to take your number off of the list?"

"No, I haven't even answered it yet," Bear responded honestly. "I was hoping they would just stop calling if I didn't answer it."

Victoria laughed. "Nice try, honey. You know it doesn't work that way." As if on cue, the phone began ringing again and Bear immediately denied the call. Her mother sighed. "Baroness, you know you're just going to have to deal with it eventually, right?"

"I know," Bear agreed, grinning as she added, "-but not until I have to."

* * *

Bear glared down at her phone. It was playing the theme of one of her favorite movies, and normally she enjoyed hearing it, but this was literally the seventeenth call of the day and the song and the calls were getting beyond old.

She knew everyone joked about telemarketers and their propensity for calling during one's dinner, but this number had been calling since roughly eleven that morning - almost twelve full hours earlier! Bear was all for ignoring things she didn't want to deal with, but she had work the next morning and, with three siblings, Bear disliked sleeping with her phone set on silent mode in case someone needed to get into contact with her.

After nearly another two hours of the phone ringing, it was time for Bear to bite the bullet and tell whatever irritatingly-persistent telemarketer that she wasn't interested in buying any product they were selling and maybe get a few hours of sleep before she had to get up for work. Bear waited for the next series of rings before pressing the 'accept' button and slowly bringing the phone to her ear, hoping to tick off the person on the other end as much as they had ticked her off during the entire day.

"What?" she asked flatly, deliberately allowing her grumpiness bleed through the phone's speaker.

"Well, little Teddy Bear, that was rude."

She froze at the sound of the chillingly-familiar voice, unable to make a sound. As it turned out, it didn't matter. The voice on the other end filled the silence with a chuckle. "Aren'tcha even gonna say Happy Hallo-"

Bear cut the Joker off with the press of a single button. She stared down at the phone, crying and laughing at the same time. He had found her, tracked down the number of her new cell phone and had been calling her all day. The Joker wasn't letting her go, and the idea filled her with fear, but at the same time... She had just hung up on the demon who had been haunting her for the last month. It had felt completely wonderful.

Another noise from the phone made her jump almost painfully, but it wasn't another call. Instead, it was a text message. Bear didn't recognize the number and felt it was safe enough to open. Surprisingly, she discovered that this wasn't their first interaction. Just under the earlier messages from 'Jason' looking for 'Gideon' by texting a wrong number, there hovered a new, very different message.

Bear fought a chill as she read, _Baroness, this is Jonny. Answer that phone call_ _now_ _. He has your sister._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! The Joker is back, no big shock. He's not one to let his 'toys' just walk away, and he will use any means necessary to keep them close. I hope you're ready, because the next chapter is going to have a lot more of him in it!
> 
> Now, I feel like we need to talk about something. I don't want to mislead any of you: This is not a romance story. The Joker has that possessive vibe you find in a lot of romance fics, but this isn't loving possession. This is just straight-up, 'he sees people as his belongings' possessiveness. This isn't going to turn out with Bear becoming the new Harley Quinn or falling in love with the Joker and seeing his madness as sanity - or worse, trying to redeem him. The Joker, my version at least, knows he's a monster and he relishes it. All of this being said, you're going to see a lot of the Joker in this fic. He's going to pursue Bear, try every trick to convince her over to his side, but it's not going to be a happy ending. I just wanted to let you all know that so you aren't wasting your time reading a fic that isn't what you're really looking for. Much love, and thank you for reading as far as you have.


	4. Come As You Are

The instant her phone rang again, Bear snatched it up and held it to her ear. She couldn't speak with the fear tightening her throat, but she didn't have to. The moment the cool screen pressed against her ear, the Joker began to speak. He was using the hard, icy voice that meant he was deadly serious, but that was just one of many reasons he held her full attention.

"I'd suggest that ya _never_ hang up on me again, little girl," he warned. "Not if ya ever want to see my guest again. At least, while she's still got a pulse."

Bear still didn't say anything and the Joker gave a low laugh that managed to sound both victorious and sinister. "That's rii-iiight! Guess who dropped by just yesterday to see her dear sister? Surprise! A lovely little Duchess. Love the names, by the way."

"Let me talk to her," Bear blurted thoughtlessly.

The Joker was silent for a long moment before breathing, "I think ya know how I feel about people giving me orders, Teddy Bear."

"Please," Bear said, trying not to feel like she was begging. "Please let me talk to her, Joker."

"Oooh, when did I give ya permission to use my given name? Strike two, little Bear."

Swallowing, Bear pressed a shaking hand to her face as she begged outright. "Please, Mr. J, please. Please let me speak to my sister. Please, please, please…"

"Mmm… ya really know howtah make a man feel like somethin' special, don't ya, Bear? I'll let ya speak to her for just a minute, but I'm gonna be listening. Don't try anything cute."

There was a bit of fumbling static, then… "Bear?"

"Hey, Dutch," Bear said in greeting, trying to keep the stifling fear from her voice. "How's he treating you?"

"Not… terribly, I suppose."

"Ya wound me, Duchess," the Joker purred, alerting Bear that she was on speakerphone. "Here I've given ya my best hospitality. Guess I'm just not good enough for royalty… Though your sister found my hospitality _satisfying_ enough last time she was here."

There was a beat of silence, and Bear could practically hear her sister's mind buzzing. "Bear?" Dutch asked, a mixture of disbelief and horror in her voice.

"Not in that way," Bear assured her younger sister. It was unwise, but she couldn't help letting a little barb fly. "I don't think he even thinks about women like that."

"Hmm, I might hafta make an exception for your sister here. Such warm, smooth skin…"

Dutch gave a scared little squeak and Bear felt a surge of hot anger, knowing that he was touching her. "What do you want?"

"What was that, Teddy Bear? I thought I heard ya ask a question, but I'm sure I musta been mistaken. That would be your third strike, and you're not exactly here to pay the price for striking out. Your sister is, but I don't think you'd want that…"

"I'm sorry!" she rushed out. "I'm just curious about what I can do for you. Surely you must want something in exchange for her freedom."

"Why, my little Bear, how clever of ya. Let me take ya off speakerphone and step away so we can talk some business. Say goodbye for now."

"Bear?" Bear's stomach twisted violently at the little girl uncertainty in Dutch's voice.

"Hang in there, Dutch. I'll get you out, I promise," she comforted as best she could.

"How lovely. The bond of sisterhood," Joker's voice oozed in her ear. Bear heard footsteps followed by the slamming of a door. "You two look so much alike. I almost couldn't tell the difference between ya when she's on the table."

"You wouldn't," Bear hissed, blood burning at the thought of Dutch being strapped to the same table she herself had been tortured on.

"Is that a dare?" Bear stayed silent and the Joker rumbled out a laugh. "I don't want to hurt little Duchess, ya know."

"You could always let her go," Bear said blandly, but was cut off by another laugh.

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that. I need her for leverage. I'll kill her if I hafta, but ya know, it's the strangest thing: she's just not as… heh, not as _interesting_ as you were."

Bear fought to keep her voice toneless as she answered, "I'm thrilled."

"Now, now, don't be flippant," he chided. She found that a bit rich coming from the man known as the Clown Prince of Gotham and gave a mirthless chuckle. When he spoke again, Bear could hear the smile in his voice - almost a normal smile rather than his psychotic smirk, but not quite. "Yeah, let's just settle with not being flippant with _me_."

For a surreal moment, Bear almost felt like the two were friends, catching up and cracking jokes. However, she experienced a quick return to their normal interactions when he spoke again. "But about our deal," he started, voice becoming deadly serious. "Here are my terms. Non-negotiable. I want ya back in Gotham. I don't care how ya have to do it, but ya have one week to get back here."

"You aren't-" Bear cut herself off, refusing to allow a question out of her mouth. "I mean, I'm surprised you aren't telling me I have to come to you."

The Joker laughed, low and evil. "I'm not saying ya won't come here of your own will eventually, but it would be cheating to blackmail ya here. No, it's just getting tricky to keep an eye on ya in Dallas. I need my men for other things."

Bear frowned. She had kept a careful eye for anyone following her or watching her mother's house. Before she could think of a way to phrase this that didn't sound like a challenge, the Joker sighed, "114 Wildflower Lane. Such a beautiful little house on a quiet little street. I particularly like the stuffed Cheshire Cat ya keep on top of your bookshelf. He's a bit of an idol of mine, ya know?"

Bear felt herself pale over the casual confirmation that he had indeed been watching her and spoke without thinking about the effect her words could have, "Stay the hell away from my mother."

"Oooh, Little Bear, I think that was a threat. Didn't I ever tell ya how I feel about threats? I think of 'em as… heh, as _challenges_." Bear stayed silent, but Joker kept talking. "Now, your mom… I definitely see where you girls get your looks from. I don't normally go for older women, but she is a beauty… I think I could spend some time with her if ya know what I mean…"

"You've made your point," Bear said, voice tight. "Any other terms?"

"I'll ignore the question this once, since you're asking what I want. But no, not especially," he said easily. "I would prefer ya keep the authorities outta things. The boys in blue are having enough issues without any help from yours truly. Or the Bat," he added darkly.

"And my sister?" Bear asked softly.

"Hmm… I don't think she causes any trouble at all with the cops, but I guess ya know her better than I do." The Joker cut off as he laughed uproariously at his own joke.

Bear stayed quiet until he had finished, then a few seconds more to be certain none of her irritation would show in her voice. "I meant, when will you release my sister?"

"Oh, that… Well, let's just say that the minute ya touch down in Gotham, little Duchess will be headed safe and sound on her way back to Texas. Not that you're gonna see her. I'm not setting up a family reunion for ya, as good a friend as I am." Something in Bear's silence must have broadcasted her skepticism, though, since he sighed. "Okay, if ya want, I'll have her call ya when she's on her way home. That work, sweetness?"

"That would be lovely, thank you," Bear gritted out.

"Oh, you are just _so_ welcome," the Joker purred. "Well, it's been… heh, it's been a real thrill talkin' to ya, Teddy Bear, but I gotta go. I'll see ya just as soon as I can find the time in my busy schedule."

"I thought you said you weren't going to take me back to your compound?" Bear asked, unable to keep the fear from her voice.

The Joker _tsk_ ed at her. "Careful, doll. I'm startin' to think ya didn't care for my hospitality, and that would just be rude." He chuckled. "I'm not gonna force ya to go anywhere, but we do have some things to discuss. Things that would be better said _face-to-face_. I'll be in touch, Little Bear."

The line went dead and the screen flickered on, showing that the phone call had lasted less than fifteen minutes, yet Bear would have sworn it had spanned hours. In yet another blink of the eye, her entire world had been flipped on its head, and now there was nothing to do but reset everything as best she could. She sighed, staring longingly at her bed.

It wasn't going to be an easy process, but it was one that should be started right away. Besides, the sooner she got back to Gotham, the sooner Dutch would be on her way home.

* * *

Bear was profoundly nervous and already guilty as she sat in Sara's waiting room. It was a cozy little area, designed with specific touches in place to soothe her patients as they readied themselves to be analyzed and diagnosed. Come to think of it, the room wasn't soothing at all. Or maybe that was just Bear projecting again.

"Bear?" Sara called. Her voice was gentle, pleasant, and still Bear jumped as though she had been shot. She tried to play it off, rising quickly to enter Sara's office, but she knew that her now-frowning friend had seen and taken note of the action.

"How are you doing today, Bear?" Sara asked, conversational tone mismatched with the scrutiny in her eyes. It wasn't just the jump that had made her suspicious: Bear was here on a Monday. She should have been at work, and Sara was always one to notice breaks in routine.

Bear shrugged. "I've been better."

"Would you like to talk about what's bothering you?" Sara led patiently.

Leaning forward, Bear gave an uncomfortable little smile. "I could, but I need you to take a more active role than listener. I need you to help me."

Succinctly as possible, Bear had summed up her current situation, no holds barred, knowing that Sara's idea of doctor/patient confidentiality would keep her from telling anyone - even the police.

"So," Bear finished finally. "I need you to help me get transferred back to the Gotham branch of my company. Write an email or two about how I underwent a traumatic event and you think that facing the scene of the trauma head-on is the best cure. You would know how to word it better than I do, but something along those lines. And also, it would be great if you could tell my mother the same thing. And my brothers."

Sara rubbed a spot on her forehead just above the bridge of her nose. It was one of the few signs of frustration she possessed. "Your younger sister has been kidnapped and is likely being tortured by the same man who did these things to you, and your solution is to play right into his hands?" Bear began to answer, but Sara's sharp gesture cut her off. "No, I'm sorry, your solution is to play into his hands while having me lie to your entire family - people who are like family to me and who would blame me _when_ , not _if_ , this goes wrong - as well as stake my professional integrity on your acting abilities by lying to your workplace? Bear, do you know how _insane_ this all sounds?"

"Yes!" she said loudly, then lowered the pitch of her voice. "Yes, okay? I know it's crazy and stupid and is probably going to end with me dead, but if I don't go, or if I call the police, or do anything he doesn't want me to do, Dutch is definitely going to end up dead. I can't let her suffer for my mistakes."

"You haven't made any mistakes, Bear!" Sara's gaze turned dark. "Yet, at least."

Bear shook her head. "If I haven't done anything wrong, then Dutch is a literal saint. I chose to transfer to Gotham. I heard about how bad everything is there, but I was motivated by the money. I knew there was a crazy guy living there who calls himself the Joker, but I still went to a club called The Jester's Crown. I escaped when it would have been so much easier to sit there and wait for death. Those were all actions I am responsible for. But Dutch? She cared about her sister, hadn't heard from her in a while, and decided to drop in unannounced on her way back from a trip abroad. She did literally nothing wrong."

"I just feel that there are some options we are missing here-" Sara started, obviously trying to scrape her psychologist persona back together, but Bear wasn't having it.

"Probably. In fact, I'm sure there are. There have to be, but the simple fact is that I don't have the time. I haven't spent much time with him, but I'm pretty sure the Joker isn't one to bluff. If I'm not back in Gotham within a week, he will kill Dutch. I can't let that happen."

Sara began to speak, and something in the look on her face told Bear that she was going to refuse. Bear dreaded it, but the time had come to play the one card she had sworn to never use: "Sara, you're being my therapist. It means a lot to me, and you're so good at it, but I don't need a therapist right now. I know it's asking a lot, but I'm asking as a friend. As your friend. Please help me."

Bear had never seen Sara look so conflicted, not once in all the years they had known each other, but eventually, she clenched her jaw and nodded. "Okay, fine. I'll help you."

* * *

"You want to go where?" Victoria asked, voice dangerously soft and faux-confused. "Back to the place where you were kidnapped and almost killed? The place you barely got away from last time? The place that Maggie told me never to let you come back to? I'm sure you can't possibly be talking about the same place, Baroness, because if you were… Well, that just wouldn't make very much sense at all."

Bear fought back a sigh. Of course, her mother wouldn't make this easy. Fortunately, Sara had coached her on what to say and how to say it in order to fake a psychological breakthrough.

"Mom," she started, eyes held wide and beseeching. "I've been talking with Sara a lot over the last few weeks, and she thinks I would really benefit from moving back to Gotham. Confronting my demons, you know? She thinks it would be healthy."

"Really?" Victoria said flatly, tone assuring Bear that it was, in fact, not a question. "The girl who has been a therapist for all of two years thinks that _my_ little girl should go back to a place where she isn't comfortable in the name of getting over something that happened such a short amount of time ago? Baroness, maybe it's time we had you talk to a _real_ therapist."

Bear frowned on her friend's behalf. Sara may be going along with this crazy scheme, but only under extremely vocal protest. If Bear was less stubborn, this wouldn't be happening at all, and that told her that Sara was indeed good at what she did. "Hey, Sara is a real therapist! I'm the one who said I wanted to go back, and when I explained why I feel this way, she said I showed a lot of progress and she agrees that it wouldn't be the worst idea. She's even told me that if I feel uncomfortable, or like I'm in danger at all, it's unhealthy and I need to come back. We're being smart about this, Mom, we really are."

"You explained why you think you should go back to Gotham?"

Bear nodded, then fought back a groan as she realized the trap she had just fallen into.

Victoria crossed her arms and set her chin. "Explain it to me, then. Why put yourself back in danger? It had better be an extraordinarily good reason, Baroness."

Pretending like she was searching for the right words, Bear's mind frantically spun, trying to put together a plausible-sounding story. She and Sara had never gotten this far, especially since Bear was far off script right now.

"Basically, I feel like this place beat me. I did my best to live somewhere new and step outside of my comfort zone, and I failed. It sucks. I just think I need to live in Gotham for a little while, just a couple of months, and then I will have beaten it. I can move on. But right now, it just feels like a gigantic block in my mind, like it's the one place I'll have to avoid forever. If I can go now, I'll get this over with, get over what could possibly turn into a gigantic phobia, and move on with my life." She let her voice break a little with the last part of her sentence, moving to stare into her mother's eyes as she let the truth come out in her voice. "I really want to move on with my life, Mom."

"Oh, Bear…" Bear knew she had won when her mother referred to her by the nickname, voice as soft and warm as her eyes. Victoria pulled her daughter into a tight hug. "I just worry about you. It feels like just a few days ago, you were telling me how dangerous the man who kidnapped you is. You seemed so convinced that he was going to come after you." She smiled ruefully. "I didn't mean to dismiss your fears then, but now I'm worried you aren't taking this seriously enough. I mean, have the police caught this man? Is he still a threat?"

Bear felt her eyes go cold and fought to keep the change from her mother's notice. "As far as I know, he hasn't been caught, but I don't think he's going to be a threat for much longer."

"Baroness…" her mother trailed, looking for all the world like she was looking for the best way to tell Bear she was being stupid.

"Mom, Batman lives in Gotham and takes an active interest in keeping bad guys off the streets. Between him and the police, it's only a matter of time until this guy is caught and thrown in jail."

Victoria nodded, still seeming unconvinced, but resigned. "All right. I still don't like it. This is a pointlessly dangerous, ill thought-out plan, and I'm not certain you understand what it will be like to be back in the place where the trauma happened-" she cut herself off, taking a deep breath. "-But I know that you're a grown woman. A very independent one, at that. You have your own mind, and since it seems you've decided to go back to Gotham, I won't try to keep you here. Just promise you'll stay in touch and let me know if anything - _anything at all_ \- happens. All right?"

Bear nodded, grateful for her mother's support. A small, snide part of her wondered what Victoria would say if she knew what Bear really was going back for, but she shoved it aside. There was no room for doubt if she was going to get Dutch back without completely falling apart mentally.

"When were you thinking of moving?" Victoria asked.

"I booked a flight on Thursday," Bear replied.

"Thursday?! _This_ Thursday? Really, Baroness, that's just irresponsible! How do you possibly expect to have enough time to pack, arrange for a place to stay, finalize your transfer paperwork, and do everything else you need to do before you leave? Did you even think about any of that?!"

Bear sighed, settling in for another argument. This one promised to be far more difficult, especially since she didn't have any ready answers for the questions her mother was asking.

* * *

"All right, folks, the pilot has turned on the 'Fasten Seatbelts' light. Please be sure to close all trays and return seats to the upright position as we prepare to land. The attendant will be around to help. We expect to land in Gotham within the next ten minutes. Weather is overcast, high chance of rain, temperature a blustery 57 degrees fahrenheit. Thank you for flying with us."

Bear did her best to tune out the droning of the speaker above her head. She was once again in the window seat, but only because this plane was so small. Every seat was a window seat. This time, the view from the small pane was anything except comforting. After they had passed through the wispy, turbulent cloud cover, Gotham materialized. The city was as dirty and foreboding as it had been when Bear had left, and it's appearance didn't improve as the plane traveled closer.

All throughout her trip, Bear had been dealing with a sense of helplessness, the suffocating feeling of being trapped. As the plane circled the airport one final time before landing, the smothering sensations surged, leaving Bear tugging at her collar as she did her best to weep silently. She had fought so hard to leave, and now she was back. In her most profound moments of self-honesty, Bear admitted that it was likely she would never leave Gotham again - at least, not while she had a heartbeat.

"Excuse me, miss," a pleasantly mid-range voice began from across the aisle. "May I offer some assistance?"

Bear glanced over, confused and taken aback when the gentleman in the single seat in the opposite row reached over, offering her an unadorned white handkerchief. Regardless of her curiosity and embarrassment, Bear accepted the cloth square and began dabbing at her face with it. (Unsure if he would want the handkerchief back, she refrained from using it to blow her nose.)

Obviously attempting to give her some privacy, the man looked out of the window on his side of the plane. It was a small aircraft, only a single seat on either side of the aisle, and many of these were left unfilled. "Ah, Gotham," the man mused. "I always miss it when I'm forced to be away. Is it the same for you?"

Choking out a laugh, Bear finished up with the handkerchief. "I guess you could say… something keeps bringing me back." She offered the cloth square to him.

He accepted it. "I apologize. Normally, I would gladly let you keep this, but it is one of my favorites."

_He has a favorite handkerchief? And why this one? It's completely plain._ Bear frowned as the cloth fluttered to a completely unfolded fall of white, adorned with a single black question mark. To her way of thinking, that made it even more strange.

She turned back to her own window, ready for the odd conversation to come to a close, but the man seemed less willing. "So, this thing that always brings you back to Gotham… Is it a man?"

Bear's brows rose incredulously, but she kept her gaze on the rapidly-approaching city. "Man, curse… Either way, I intend to take care of things once and for all."

As she finished speaking, the plane touched down and the pilot's voice came over the loudspeaker, cutting off Bear's conversation with the strange man for good. The plane taxied to the appropriate gate and there was a flurry of movement as people stood and retrieved their luggage from the overhead compartments.

The man across the aisle beckoned gallantly for Bear to stand first and she did, pulling her simple duffel bag from the compartment in which she had stowed it. With that complete, she made her way quickly and efficiently down the narrow aisle of the plane. As Bear moved, she did her best to ignore the feeling of the man's slightly-wild eyes watching, ever-present in an itch just between her shoulder blades. The relief she got when she was out of his line of sight was like a physical weight had been lifted.

Bear waited at the baggage claim for her black suitcase to rotate around. While she stood watching other people's belongings slide onto the spinning carousel, Bear's pocket vibrated as her phone rang. She didn't recognize the number, but she saw that the area code was from Gotham.

"What?" she said by way of greeting, voice harsh.

"Miss Wells?"

"Uh… Yes?" Bear asked, voice softening as she realized that the voice was wholly unfamiliar, not the Joker's cackling tone as she had feared.

"This is Dr. Lucero at Gotham General Hospital."

"I'm sorry, I'm just getting off a flight. What can I do for you, Doctor?" Bear asked, holding the phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she tugged her luggage off of the carousel.

"Ah, my apologies. I just finished wiring the jaw of your landlord, Mr. Brewington. He was brutally attacked, but won't allow me to continue treating him until you've been made aware that your old apartment is once more available."

Bear blinked a few times, staring blankly at a nearby water fountain. "Well, tell him thank you for letting me know and I'll come by his office to speak with him as soon as he's feeling up to a visit."

"Mr. Brewington says that the key is in his office. His wife will give it to you and you can settle payment later. He asks that you please move in right away." His voice grew muffled, as if he had turned away from the phone for a moment. "He wants you to move in tonight, if possible."

"I- I will," Bear agreed, wondering a bit about all of this. "Please thank him for me and tell him I hope his recovery goes smoothly. Thank you, as well," she added as an afterthought.

"Don't thank me," the doctor said shortly as Bear made a face at his rudeness. "I've worked in Gotham long enough to recognize the work of the Joker when I see it. I don't know how you're involved with him, but I think it's terrible that an innocent man got dragged into the mess. Thankfully, a broken jaw is the extent of his injuries. Knowing your _friend_ , it could have been much worse."

The phone clicked a disconnect - before Bear could protest that the Joker wasn't her friend - and Bear tucked the device back in her pocket. _What a dick. He has a point, but still…_

Fighting anger and an odd sense of guilt, Bear made her way out of the airport to the parking lot where taxis and limos lined up. She was careful to ignore everyone holding signs near the door. If the Joker had sent someone with a car for her, she didn't want to know. Instead, she walked straight out to the curb and up to the first empty taxi she saw. When the driver accepted her fare, she climbed in the backseat, dragging her carry-on and suitcase behind her.

One short cab ride later, Bear stepped into the office of her landlord. It was late, getting close to midnight, but Mrs. Brewington still sat in the small, dimly-lit room. When she saw Bear standing in the doorway, the older woman jumped, nearly dropping the sheaf of paper in her hands.

Bear smiled reassuringly. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Brewington. I didn't mean to scare you."

Mrs. Brewington's answering smile was pitiful, waving and insincere. She looked more frightened than anything. "I have your key right here, Miss Wells," she quavered, opening the top drawer of the desk with hands that shook so violently that she could barely grab the jingling bits of metal. When she had finally picked them up, the landlord's wife held them out to Bear, carefully avoiding eye contact.

Gently, Bear accepted the keys, noting the way Mrs. Brewington flinched away so that she wouldn't even brush Bear's hand with her fingers. Bear frowned, but bid the woman a good night as she collected her luggage and made her way up the stairs.

On the way, Bear fidgeted with the keys. They were on her personal keyring, the one she had presumably left in the Joker's possession. That, more than anything else, solidified her understanding that the Brewingtons had been visited by the Clown Prince of Gotham - and come out considerably the worse for it. No wonder Mrs. Brewington had been so nervous. Bear had never been particularly close with her landlord or his family, but she knew firsthand what the Joker was capable of doing, and she wouldn't wish that on people she hated.

Finally, she was standing in front of the familiar old door. It still had the same dents and scratches it had borne during her time here, and Bear tried to take comfort in that rather than allow the suffocating feeling of closeness to overwhelm her.

After unlocking the door - the deadbolt still stuck just a tad at the beginning - Bear walked into her old apartment. Whatever she had been expecting to find, this wasn't it, and Bear wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

Everything was exactly as she had left it. Every picture, poster, item of furniture, and more had been returned to its original position. It was almost enough to make Bear believe that she had never moved out, but something about the way Doctor Lucero's message over the phone had been worded, Bear knew that someone else had lived in this apartment while she was away. For some reason, they had moved out - she had some idea of what that something could have been - but Bear knew Mr. Brewington hadn't kept all of her things on a whim. The knowledge, no matter how conjecturally gained, that the Joker had likely taken all of her belongings and stored them with the belief that she would eventually return… it was disturbing, to say the least.

Before Bear could completely dissolve into panic, her phone rang. It was once more an unfamiliar number, but she decided to answer it anyway. The worst had already happened: she was back in Gotham.

"Hello?" she asked, voice dead.

"Bear?" a voice crackled.

"Dutch!" Bear cried. "Where are you? Are you safe? Is he with you?"

Bear couldn't be sure since the connection didn't seem to be the best, but it sounded like Dutch gave a tired little laugh. "I'm fine, I'm safe. He let me go. He said you came back to Gotham. You shouldn't have done that, Bear."

"How could I not?" she asked skeptically. "I would do anything for you guys, you know that."

"Of course I know that. But more importantly, _he_ knows that. Bear, I'm scared for you."

Bear couldn't exactly argue with her sister's feeling. "Yeah, I am too. But where are you now?"

"Getting ready to get on a plane to Dallas," Dutch answered, an announcement in the background confirming her location. "I have to go soon, but I was told to call you and make sure you knew that he kept his end of the deal." The background noise faded a bit, as though Dutch had stepped to a somewhat quieter location. "Be careful, Bear. Please. You should hear the way he talks about you… He isn't going to leave you alone. We have to find a way to deal with this."

Bear blanched, knowing it was likely the Joker had tapped the phone he gave her. If he even got a hint that Dutch was thinking about turning him in to the authorities, her life would be on the line. Quickly, she stopped her younger sister's train of thought. "Leave him to me, Dutch. Your job is to keep Mom or the boys from suspecting anything. You know they would just panic. It's not going to be easy."

"You're telling me," Dutch sighed. There was another announcement in the background and she came back on the line. "They're boarding my section now. I have to go."

"Okay," Bear accepted, throat tightening inexplicably. "Throw this phone away and get a new one as soon as you can. Stay in touch. I love you."

"Love you, too, sis. More than anything. Stay safe."

With a simple press of the button, the call was ended and Bear was left alone in an apartment, surrounded by the belongings of a woman who had died almost two months before. There was nothing to do now except for wait. _And plot_ , a dark corner of her mind added. She couldn't disagree. _It would certainly be more productive than sitting here crying._

Bear's jaw firmed as she nodded to herself. She was done being a victim. She had to be ready for whatever the Joker threw at her next.


	5. Dead!

_People are the worst_ , Bear decided, striding through the Gotham branch of her company. It was her first week back, and if she thought the rumors at the Dallas branch were bad, these definitely changed her mind. In comparison, her worst Dallas co-workers seemed almost welcoming.

In the brief time since Bear had arrived for the day, she had heard a virtual shitstorm of rumors, the most popular of which seemed to be that she had been in police custody, suspected of being involved with the murders of the other girls in the office. There were variations on that particular story, of course, including that she had evidence of the killer but had declined to enter the Witness Protection Program, and that she had been absolved because she had slept with the police chief.

_Why do these stories always make me out to be a whore?_ she puzzled internally as she strode back to her cubicle. It wasn't the same cubicle, of course. Since she had left a little over a month before, her old position had been filled. Bear didn't exactly object. This was a company, of course, so she hadn't expected them to hold her spot for her in case she decided to come back. No, her main problem was that the woman who had replaced her was lacking in talent in every area save one: she excelled at getting others to do her work while making it sound legitimate. Hell, Bear had done the job before, and she still found herself getting stuck with tasks that she knew damn well were part of her old job and shouldn't have been done by 'underlings'.

To make it all worse, Bear was supposed to feel lucky she had even gotten transferred back to the Gotham branch. Apparently, she was on rather thin ice with the company. The higher-ups were less-than-pleased that she hadn't given any notice before transferring to Dallas, and were largely unsympathetic about her supposed family emergency. They were even less pleased that she expected to be transferred back with no issues.

_Miss Wells,_ a particularly passive-aggressive e-mail on the subject had said, _we wish you a full recovery and complete regaining of your sense of security, but we wish to stress that we are a business. Your transfer back to Gotham_ must _be regarded as more than a psychological experiment in helping you gain closure. (The fact that your original transfer to Dallas was under false pretenses is another issue entirely, and was taken heavily into account when considering your request to move back to Gotham.) We feel it is only right to warn you that your transfer was accepted on a one-time basis and only due to the professionalism of your therapist, Miss Owens, and your own exemplary work record. However, if you wish to obtain another change of location in your future, we suggest that you choose another company with whom to work. Best wishes in Gotham._

In short, if Bear wanted to keep her job, she had to keep her head down and deal with whatever nonsense the company tossed her way. She had no doubts that she would be shown the door if she complained overly much, or even to the wrong person.

Initially, the e-mail had frightened her on Maggie's behalf. After all, she was the one who had put through Bear's transfer to Dallas. If the company was aware of the discrepancy between the reason she had given and the story Sara had told, it could mean trouble for Maggie. To make matters worse, Bear had yet to see her old boss since she had gotten back to Gotham.

Through some careful prodding and manipulation of the grapevine, Bear discovered that Maggie was still employed with the company - in fact, she had been promoted. Unfortunately, it was a promotion which took her to a different department altogether, but Bear couldn't bring herself to be unhappy about that. Part of her wanted to seek out the company of her old friend, but the majority of her knew that her ex-boss would be disappointed and worried that Bear had returned to Gotham. Bear didn't even know what was going on, and so she wasn't ready to explain the situation yet.

Wading through a river of whispers, Bear made her way back from the restrooms and sat at her designated cubicle, ready to work on a report for the woman who was now technically her boss. 'For' meaning 'she was supposed to be doing it, not Bear', of course.

Regardless of the extra work, Bear was doing her best not to be sarcastic or derisive, even in her own thoughts. Of course, this went out the window as soon as one of the new hires, Tanya, rolled over to her. Tanya was a cheerfully brutal brunette with a sharp temper and a seemingly-overwhelming need to make Bear break. Bear didn't have the patience to deal with the girl, but she also knew that she had faced far worse in the past. Still, Tanya was an annoyance she didn't want to have to deal with.

"Sooo, Nessie, I heard you got in trouble this morning."

"No I didn't," Bear responded without even looking at the other employee. Idly, she wondered who had told the new hires about her old, much-hated nickname. Tanya made some kind of disbelieving comment and she shook her head. "I just got here. I haven't had time to get in trouble."

"Ooohhhh," Tanya breathed. Bear became a little concerned. If the bouncy girl let out too much air, what would keep her head from deflating completely? There were certainly low odds that a brain would get in the way. "Well, good luck. I heard Rita is really mad about the way you did yesterday's stock reports. She got a talking-to from her boss, so she's going to take it out on you."

"Good to know," Bear said simply. Faced with a lack of reaction, Tanya scooted back over to her own area. When she was moving away, Bear took advantage of the lack of scrutiny to pull a horrible face.

When she was being completely honest with herself, Bear could admit that she hated all of the new hires in her department. She found most of them to be self-important gossips who were most interested in seeing who could do the least amount of work and still get paid. Oddly enough, of all of the juicy topics they could gossip about, they seemed to speak very little about the women they had replaced and how they met their end. The only time they seemed interested in the previous employees was when they were telling each other how Bear had probably killed them all. It was sickening.

It came as no surprise to her when Bear found herself drawing away from her coworkers. She had never been overly-fond of her old coworkers, and she wasn't going to lie and say she was just because they were dead now, but the new ones were literally intolerable. And so, as the week wore on, Bear made an effort to be left alone. Besides the comparative peace it gave her, Bear also needed to focus on completing work exactly correctly for her demanding boss.

To make matters worse, it wasn't as if Bear could use her time outside of work to relax and refresh. She had made it a personal goal to be outside after work as little as possible. There was no particular sign that the Joker would be watching her in the darkness, but as someone who ran a nightclub for a (legitimate) living, Bear figured he would be more likely to be awake and active in the nighttime. Besides, the dark made it harder to keep an eye out for tails, and it soon got to the point of being uncomfortable for Bear to be outside when the sun wasn't out.

Since Halloween was right around the corner and the days were growing shorter, this meant Bear had to get off of work, frantically complete any errands she had, and get back to her apartment with no time for leisure of any kind. Unfortunately, the moment she locked the door of her apartment behind her, the horrors really began.

Bear's typical routine was to neaten up her apartment, wipe down a few surfaces, and dust (partially in hopes of finding a bug or camera if one had been hidden) before showering and getting dressed in her coziest pajamas. She would then make dinner, fighting through her lack of appetite to choke something down, then try to distract herself with a movie - or, more accurately, a series of movies. Since her return to Gotham, Bear had been experiencing episodes of insomnia. The one time she had tried taking some medication to help her sleep, Bear had found herself trapped in a nightmare heavily featuring the Joker, who seemed to have kidnapped her entire family. When she finally managed to wake up, she swore to herself that she would never again use artificial means to fall asleep.

Unfortunately, this meant that she was virtually trapped in her home from dusk until dawn with nothing to do but try distracting herself from her worries. There was a very real chance the apartment was being watched, if not monitored from the inside, and Bear had come to the conclusion that she needed to move to another apartment. However, she had tried to initiate a conversation with the still-injured Mr. Brewington on the subject and he had broken into a near panic, Mrs. Brewington not far behind. Needless to say, Bear had changed the subject and resigned herself to staying put for the time being.

In truth, she wasn't sure how much longer she would be able to go on this way.

* * *

One night the next week, she came home from a long day of doing someone else's work to find her apartment door opened slightly, the doorknob hanging at an odd angle, and voices emanating from inside. Groaning, she threw the door open, glaring at the two people she saw inside, chatting comfortably in her living room.

Bear was already inside the apartment when she pulled up short. The two men were completely unfamiliar, both with dark hair and scruffy jaws. Neither was the Joker - thankfully - but neither was familiar at all. This left Bear with a completely different problem: two strange men were in her apartment and she had no guarantees that they weren't going to kill her. At least if they were working for the Joker, there would be pretty fair odds they wouldn't kill her. If nothing else, they would be saving her for the Clown himself.

"Hey," one of the men drawled with relish. "Look what we have here! Hot piece of ass, ain't she?"

"Yeah she is. And she locked herself right in here with us. What a sweetie," the other man agreed with a laugh.

Bear looked around briefly before rushing to the window and pulling the blinds and the curtains. "You guys have to get out of here, now. It isn't safe."

"Safe?" the second man asked. "You're a little crazy, huh?"

"Lucky we don't mind that."

"You aren't listening to me," Bear said with a frustrated sigh. "Things are going to happen very soon if you don't leave. I don't know either of you, but I don't want your deaths on my conscience."

"Listen, lady, you should be grateful we aren't gonna just murder you on the spot."

"Not like you've got much here worth stealing," one of the men said, throwing down an empty purse in disgust.

"How long have you guys been in here?" Bear asked nervously.

The men exchanged a look, as if they were suspicious of the question, but curious about where she was going with this. After a long pause, the first man answered, "About twenty-five minutes."

"Twenty-five minutes?" she echoed in horror. Whirling back around, Bear peeked through the blinds. Sure enough, a suspiciously-placed black van that had been parked across the street since she had returned to Gotham was now missing. "Shit," she breathed. "You guys have to get out of here. He's coming."

"Who's coming?"

"And how are we supposed to believe that you're not just trying to get us out of here?"

"You seem pretty desperate."

"I _am_ desperate," Bear hissed. "There's a very bad man who has been watching me and my apartment for while now and the surveillance team he had out there is missing. Odds are, they saw you _idiots_ break in and went off to tell their boss. You have to get out before he gets here or you won't live to regret your mistake."

One man seemed to be convinced by her speech, running a hand over his close-cut black hair as his dark eyes bounced nervously around the room. The other seemed largely unconcerned, giving a short laugh as he shook wavy brown locks back from his face.

"And we should, what? Return your valuables, leave, and let you call the police? I don't think so, babe. You've seen our faces and know what we sound like. You know enough to get us put away for a long time. I don't like it and we ain't leaving." Bear narrowed eyes at the man, smirking to herself as she mused that he looked like an angry skateboarder, circa 1998.

"Maybe we should listen to her," Crew Cut muttered. "Even if she's just making stuff up, she's obviously nuts. We don't want to have to deal with that."

"Shut up," Skater ordered. "We've come too far for this. You can sit here and guard her if you're so concerned, but I'm gonna keep looking. We have a decent haul here, and I'm not gonna lose it over some crazy chick making you sweat. Here." He handed Crew Cut a gun and gestured for him to guard Bear while he made his way into her bedroom.

The now-armed robber looked unconvinced, but still gestured for Bear to sit down in an armchair. She wasn't thrilled with the arrangement, but judging by the expression on her companion's face, she wasn't the only one. Much as she didn't want to watch the two men die, odds were good that the Joker was on his way. Even if they left before he arrived, there was nothing in the apartment that was irreplaceable. The major pain was going to be that she would have to deal with the Joker regardless.

"So, uh, who is this guy who's been watching you and your place?" Crew Cut asked uncomfortably.

Bear lifted an eyebrow. If she had been holding someone at gunpoint, she probably wouldn't be trying to make conversation with them, but if this man wanted to know… "The Joker," she said finally, unsure of how to feel when a dose of fear flashed across his face. The surge of satisfaction she felt was impossible to fight, but she didn't want the Clown Prince of Gotham to come in and clean up. That sounded like the kind of thing he would consider a favor, and the Joker always wanted to be paid back.

"Th- The Joker? What does he want with you?"

She sighed, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "I have no idea. He kidnapped me a couple of weeks ago, tortured me for a while, then I escaped. Made it all the way back home, away from Gotham, but he got my sister, so I had to come back. He's been keeping an eye on me ever since. Not really sure what for."

"He tortured you?" Crew Cut asked, seeming to forget about his gun as he leaned forward in morbid fascination. "How did you survive? Every story I've heard about the Joker says that he doesn't exactly go easy on his victims."

"He doesn't," Bear replied flatly. "And how I survived? Easy. I lived because he wanted me to, plain and simple. If he had been trying to kill me, I wouldn't be here right now."

"And you escaped?" he mused incredulously. "How did you manage that?"

One corner of Bear's mouth lifted in a half-smile. "You know, I'm not really sure. I think it was a mix of desperation and being willing to do things that surprise even the Clown himself."

The man shook his head in a move that looked almost admiring. "You're one tough broad. I know it doesn't mean much coming from a man who's got a gun pointed at you, but I'm sorry. I wish we weren't doing this." Bear frowned at him and Crew Cut widened his eyes sincerely. "I'm being serious! If half of what you've said is true, you've been through enough without having two random criminals steal your shit."

Unable to believe the odd turn this conversation had taken, she shook her head. "Everyone's got to make a living, right? Besides, it seems like your partner in there keeps you on a pretty tight leash."

"I wouldn't call it a leash…" he trailed. "But yeah, he's in charge. He's nuts, and I wouldn't want to cross him. I don't expect you to understand."

"I don't," Bear said simply. "But my bar for people like that has been set considerably higher than most people's, I guess."

Crew Cut gave a snort. "Yeah, I believe it. Can I ask you something?" Bear nodded and the man leaned even closer. "Is he really as bad as they say? Are the stories true?"

"Oh, yeah," Bear confirmed. "It's all true. Every one of those stories and more."

"More?" he repeated in awe.

She nodded once. "The stories don't even tell the half of it."

Bear could tell Crew Cut wanted to ask more, but Skater ducked back into the room. "Nothing in there. Not much, anyway." His eyes shifted to the gun, held loosely and pointed at the floor. "Dammit, are you talking to her? I told you to keep her from trying anything. That didn't mean you should tell her your life's story! I'm trying to keep us out of prison, not lay down a trail of clues for the cops to follow!"

"Hey, maybe we ought to think about getting out of here," Crew Cut said hesitantly, avoiding the topic of conversing with Bear. "I mean, we've looked through everything, gotten everything that's worth getting, and we can still leave before he's supposed to show up."

"' _He_ '," Skater mocked. "This is why you don't talk to the victim. They get inside your head, man. You can't listen to them."

"You don't know who is coming after her, though. She's being watched by _the Joker_ ," Crew Cut whispered, as if he was afraid of being overheard if he said the name too loudly.

"Oh, man, not the Joker!" Skater wailed, cutting himself off with a wicked grin. "Come on. We both know that she chose the first person she could think of with a bad enough rep to scare us off. Don't tell me it's working on you, dude."

"I just- I just think we should take this seriously," Crew Cut said with a nervous glance at the door. "We got what we came for, so let's just leave before anyone shows up- not just the Joker, but anyone. You said you don't want to go to prison, but that's what's gonna happen if we get caught in here."

Bear moved her gaze to Skater, watching to see how the logical argument was received. He looked unconvinced and - somehow - even angrier than he had started out. "Hey, who's the one in charge here?"

"...you," Crew Cut admitted reluctantly.

"That's right, me. And we're not done here until I say we're done." Skater glanced around the apartment, eyes landing on Bear as a twisted smile bloomed on his face. "And I feel like having a little bit of fun with our helpless homeowner here."

Bear snorted. "Firstly, while I applaud your alliteration, I'm hardly a homeowner. I rent this place, obviously. And secondly, do you really think you have time for 'fun'?"

"Not this again," he groaned. "I told you, lady, your pathetic attempts at getting us out of here aren't going to work. I ain't buying this whole 'Joker' thing. He's a big-name criminal. He don't take interest in petty crimes against little, private citizen fish like you, so just give it a rest, would ya?"

"Much as I think society would be better off with your removal from it," Bear said coldly, watching the rage grow on Skater's face, "I told you before, I don't want your deaths on my conscience. At least your friend here gets that."

"Besides, she's been tortured by the Joker, man," Crew Cut informed his co-robber. "Nothing you can do is going to make any kind of impact."

"Tortured by the Joker? Her? Come on, even you know that the Clown never lets his victims live. He kills 'em all. That alone should show you she's making up stories."

"She escaped…" Crew Cut trailed off, and Bear could literally see the belief in her story draining from his face.

"Come _on_ ," Skater said, voice filled with exasperation. "You know no one escapes from his compound, let alone some civilian with no training or skills or superpowers. You can't believe this. You're not stupid, and I certainly ain't. She's lying to you."

Crew Cut turned to Bear, an oddly hurt and betrayed expression crossing his face, but an interruption came before he could speak: a wild, eerie laugh echoed through the apartment, bouncing off the walls and reverberating until Bear felt like the three stood surrounded by a sea of ' _ha'_ s. Immediately, both robbers lost all color and Crew Cut dropped the gun before scrambling to pick it up again.

"Shit," Bear muttered, a frustrating sense of pity twisting her stomach. She turned to the two now-frantic men. "Follow my lead, okay?"

The sounds of light knocking sounded from the door, following an uneven pattern. "Oh, Teddy Bear," the Joker called, voice breathy. "Arent'cha gonna let me in? I haven't seen ya in _so_ long… Well, I haven't talked to ya in so long; I _see_ ya all the time…"

Face twisting in disgust at the implications of his comment, Bear moved for the door, but was stopped by Crew Cut. "Are you sure you should do that?" he whispered.

"I hear ya got some company," the Joker remarked. "I can't… heh, I can't _wait_ to meet them. By the by, Little Bear, ya got five seconds to open the door before I break it down."

Ripping her arm out of Crew Cut's grip, Bear rushed over to the door. If she took too long to open it, there were pretty good odds the Joker was going to notice the obviously-broken doorknob or the forced lock. That would destroy any chance she had of getting the robbers out of her apartment alive. While Skater wouldn't be a giant loss to the world, she was growing oddly fond of Crew Cut. He seemed like he would be a good guy if he got away from his cohort.

With such a focus on distracting the Joker from the door, Bear hadn't really considered who and what she was going to find on the other side of the threshold. She yanked the door open, but spent a long moment staring up at the man on the other side - 'man' being a loose term, of course.

The paleness of his skin, the vivid green of his hair, and the scarlet slash of his lips had all managed to fade somewhat in her mind over the time since she had escaped, but his presence was a solid reminder of how intimidating all of these were. His tattoos still stood out, dark and swirling against all of that paleness. Tonight, he was bare-chested, wearing only a long purple duster to cover his torso. It swept down past his tight black jeans only to tap against his clunky black boots.

Realizing she was staring blankly at his feet, Bear lifted her chin and made eye contact with her worst nightmare. He had been studying her as well, and when she raised her head, the Joker's lips stretched in a metal teeth-baring smile, one that squinted his green eyes without making the expression look any more sincere. Bear kept her own face free of emotion - as much as possible, that is.

The smile faded from the Joker's face and his ducked to stare intently at her. "So, Teddy Bear… It's been a while." He was silent for a long moment before a broad smirk split his face. "Didja miss me?"

"Approximately as much as I was forced to," Bear responded cryptically.

The Joker let out another chilling laugh. "So polite… What's the reason for it, sweetness?"

"From everything I remember about you, you like to make people grovel when they want something," Bear replied, fighting to keep the disgust from her voice. It wasn't all for him, anyway. She couldn't stand the knowledge the she knew a psychopath so intimately.

"Ya sure gotta strange way of grovelin', Teddy Bear. I haven't even heard my name yet." The smile disappeared from his face as abruptly as if it had been wiped away. "Besides, why are you gonna grovel for the lives of two men who were tryin' to rob ya blind - and unless I'm mistaken, they were thinkin' of doin' a little bit extra, werent'cha, boys?"

Skater fumbled over his own words, "No, no, sir! We were just, uh- Nothing like that. It was- We were…"

Crew Cut stayed silently strong, even though Bear could tell he was terrified. The Joker was watching Skater intently, smiling as he followed along with the man's stumbling speech. He nodded along, even, bobbing his green-haired head like he was hearing more than Skater was actually saying.

Finally, Bear took pity on the horrible man, all in the name of keeping Crew Cut alive - though the idea of pissing off the Joker was an added bonus. "They're my painters."

"Is that right, Little Bear?" he asked mockingly, grinning a menacing grin at her. "As a point of interest, I still haven't heard ya say my name…"

"They're just some guys I hired to paint my apartment, Jo-" she cut off at the look of warning that flashed across his face and swallowed roughly. "Mr. J."

The Joker's smile stretched even more widely at the sound of the gritted-out name. "That's my sweet little Teddy Bear. Now, why dont'cha just stop lyin' to me and admit that these men were here to hurt ya?"

"We weren't-" Skater started, but was cut off by a crack of laughter from the Joker.

"Ya were," he confirmed instead. "Ya came here to hurt my girl, to take from her, to take _her_ from me, but ya forgot one thing." The Joker's tattooed hand whipped out, grasping Skater by the neck and pulling him close to whisper in his face. "I don't let people take what's mine, and that sweet Bear over there? _Mine_."

Bear made a strangled sound of disagreement and he glanced at her, amusement lighting his eyes to a shade of electric green nearly as bright as his hair. "Objections, sweetness?"

"Yeah, to pretty much everything you just said." Before she could move on to claim once more that the men were her painters, the Joker released Skater and placed his hand over the lower half of his face, letting the tattooed mouth on his hand show his amusement.

"Ya let me into your place when I ask, you've been nothing but nice to me all day, came back to Gotham just for little old me…" His voice dropped into a joyous murmur as he added, "I'll bet you even dream about me, dont'cha, Teddy Bear?"

"These men are my painters," Bear said firmly, deliberately avoiding the question. She pointed at Skater, adding "That one is Stuart and the other one is Carson."

"I didn't believe ya last time, little girl. Why should this time be any different?"

She didn't know how to begin convincing an archetypal liar that her story was actually the truth, but Bear gave it her best shot, adding details and background in an attempt to appeal to whatever logical side he had. "There were some scuff marks in the bathroom from when Mr. Brewington replaced the shower, so I hired them to paint it. They just finished for the day and now they're on their way out. Isn't that right, guys?"

Crew Cut and Skater, who had been nodding supportively behind her, now made noises of agreement, Crew Cut even throwing in a story about an early job they had to get to the next morning and how they should really be leaving.

"So these fine, hardworking gentlemen were just on their way out, were they?" Joker asked, smiling pleasantly. All of them nodded and he mirrored the gesture along with them exaggeratedly, moving closer to Bear and the door to the apartment. "I'll escort them out, then, Little Bear. Oh, Frost!" he called, smoothly drawing a chrome-plated pistol and shooting each man in the center of his forehead.

Bear jumped and fought down a shriek at the succession of explosions right next to her face, along with the sight of the two freshly-killed men. Frost came to the door of the apartment, seeming wary as he peeked inside.

"Two for ya, Frosty," the Joker said, gesturing at the bodies.

"Yes, boss." Oddly enough, Frost looked relieved as he studied the bodies, but Bear was distracted by the other parts of his appearance. Frost looked like hell. His clothes were rumpled, his face was pale, his eyes were adorned with black circles, and - judging by the state of his hair - he hadn't showered in days.

Before Bear could think too much about it, the Joker clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man," he affirmed before making his way deeper into Bear's apartment, leaving her to trail behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note - Do any of you guys remember, as a kid, when a stray animal (etc.) would come around and your parents warned you not to name it because you would get attached? Well, turns out that's a thing, because as soon as I started calling Crew Cut by even a nickname, I started really liking him. I was actually sad to see him go! Of course, the Joker wouldn't let something like feelings dictate who he kills, and even a perceived threat to Bear is something that has to be dealt with immediately and without mercy.


	6. I Don't Care

"Why so upset, doll? Daddy's home." The Joker grinned, obviously proud of himself as he sprawled on her couch, stretching his arms outward until his purple leather gloves rested along the back of the sofa and his bare chest was on display. Bear didn't even dignify his question with a response, unsure of one she could give that wouldn't encourage him. As always, he needed no encouragement. "No one's gonna hurtcha while I'm around."

"Of course not," Bear said venomously. "You're the only one allowed to hurt me."

He sat forward intently, green eyes held wide and unblinking as he studied her. Finally, his scarlet-slicked lips spread in a smirk as he gave his signature odd chuckle. "Ha ha ha haaaa… There's the fire I knew ya had, Teddy Bear. I was scared I broke ya already. Shoulda guessed those manners only come out when ya want somethin'."

"Didn't work, did it? You killed those men anyway."

The Joker frowned at her bitter tone. In a voice seemingly designed to make her feel stupid and hyperreactive, he lectured, "We both know those men were here to rob ya. Probably worse, too. Why do you care about their lives?"

"For the last time," she gritted out, "They were not here to rob me."

"Your doorknob is broken, sweetness." His gaze glittered triumphantly. "Someone forced it on the way in here. Either it was those two men who I killed for it, or it was another criminal. I mean, it would have to be a low-level thug. I already put out the word to everyone worth telling that you're off limits, but maybe it's time to do a sweep of the small fish in Gotham… Ya know, wipe out some of the riff-raff… Unless ya want to admit that I was right and those morons were here to rob ya."

Bear stayed quiet. There was no right answer here and she was at a total loss on what to say. Once again, the Joker gamely filled the silence with his droning, oddly-emphasized voice. "I wouldn't think ya would want to be responsible for me takin' out every small-time criminal in this city, but maybe that plays right into your… heh, _hero_ complex."

Now, she was left with a _real_ conundrum. If Bear continued denying that Crew Cut and Skater were criminals, she had no doubt that the Joker would carry out his threat to kill a large part of the criminal population in Gotham. That might not exactly be a bad thing on the surface. A lot of people who would be victims of violent crimes might escape that fate, and lives would be saved. On the other hand, the Joker would kill _every_ criminal. Petty theft, drug possession, parole violators... People who were ultimately- well, if not 'harmless', then fairly close. The power vacuum alone could be enough to cripple Gotham for months until someone worse came in, or innocent people were coerced into dealing drugs, stealing, or otherwise becoming underlings for the big bosses.

With a sigh and much gritting of her teeth, Bear forced out, "Fine. They were robbing my apartment. They were criminals. Happy?"

The Joker threw back his green-haired head, resting it on the back of the couch while he forced a rough laugh from his throat. When he faced her once more, his scarlet lips were spread in a silvery smile. "Oh, Teddy Bear," he said, something between fondness and possession in his voice. "I'm always happy around ya."

Trying to tamp down the discomfort she felt at having the ruthless criminal in her apartment - even if it was a place she didn't feel a strong connection with anymore - Bear crossed her arms and nodded firmly. "Glad we got that out in the open. I expect you'll be leaving soon?"

"Of course not," he rejected easily. "Frost has gotta take care of those guys and I don't have a car if he isn't here. Looks like you're stuck with me."

"I can call you a taxi," Bear immediately offered.

"I don't think so."

"You're right; too expensive. How about an Uber? They can be a little sketchy around here, but I know how much you love scaring new people."

"Aww, ya know me so well," he cooed, bringing another stab of self-loathing about her knowledge of a psychopathic serial killer's likes and dislikes list. "But right now, my priority is you, and finding out why ya haven't come ta see me since ya been back in Gotham."

Bear blinked at that. "You told me I didn't have to come back to your compound. I asked about that, specifically."

"Mmm… I had some plans for ya, Teddy Bear, but you just keep _fucking- them- up._ " The shift from indulgent smugness to furious crime lord took Bear by surprise - though she wasn't entirely sure why. At the moment, she was just focused on staying out of reach. "Do ya know what we're gonna do about that?"

Wordlessly, Bear shook her head and he laughed at her, the sound seeping from between his parted lips without showing mirth on any other parts of his face. Slowly, the Joker reached out a hand and pointed firmly to the couch cushion next to him. She didn't move, and he casually moved his hand toward the oversized, chrome-plated pistol in a holster under his arm, raising the blankness of his shaved eyebrows at her all the while.

So much for staying out of reach.

Gingerly, Bear moved around her coffee table and sat stiffly next to the menacing figure. He turned toward her even as she sat facing forward, thumping one booted foot on the coffee table as his other leg curled on the couch. The tattooed hand that had been resting on the back of the couch reached for her now, tugging a strand of dark hair loose from her bun to twist around a pale finger. With a start, Bear realized she was still wearing her business clothes from the office. It felt like an eternity had passed since she had left work instead of a couple of hours.

"So, Teddy Bear…" His hand inched up the captured strand of her hair until it was buried in the roots and he made a fist. Bear gasped at the sudden pain and blinked back the tears that had speared into her eyes. "Why haven't ya come to see me?"

"I was busy," Bear said shortly.

The Joker simply pulled harder. "What was that, little Bear?"

"I just got back to work and I have to climb my way back up. Besides that, I've been busy fighting all the rumors that I was the one who killed all those girls who went missing at your club." Bear couldn't keep the wry blame from her tone.

"If ya would just ask me nicely, I could make everyone telling those rumors disappear," the Joker said with a threatening grin. "Or, better yet, come to my place and I'll make sure ya never have to work again."

Bear snorted. "Sell my soul so I don't have to deal with the idiots at work? No thanks. Besides, I would end up dealing with something much worse."

In a moment, his hand was wrapped around her throat and Bear was kicking herself for her sass. Yes, it had felt wonderful, but now she was being choked by a lunatic and had no idea how to deal with the situation.

The Joker, on the other hand, had no such doubts. Keeping his iron grip, he lowered Bear until she was laying across his lap, staring up at his pale face from a position of submission. He grinned down at her while her vision began to tunnel, then fleck with little dots of gray and black. It then became more and more difficult to keep her eyes open, until Bear found herself unable to fight any more. Her eyelids fluttered down as her mind readied itself to let go of consciousness…

Suddenly, the stifling pressure had disappeared and Bear's body - without asking permission from her - was gasping. She tried to roll to her side, for some reason thinking that would help her efforts, but found herself anchored by an arm grasping her tightly around the middle. When she could focus on anything besides taking in as much air as possible, Bear found that the Joker's other hand was stroking her hair almost gently.

"That's my girl," he soothed. "You've been gone for so long, but you still took that with no struggle. Not even a twitch. I'm so proud."

Had she really not struggled? Bear would have sworn she had fought him, but couldn't remember exactly when that would have happened. Was she broken? So inured to the Joker's torture that she just accepted death without a second's rebellion because he might get angry with her? That was… pathetic. She might as well start dressing as a jester and calling herself Harley Quinn.

As soon as the feeling had returned to her limbs, Bear reached up and slapped the Joker's hand away from her hair. At the same time, she struggled to sit up, fighting his hold. His arm tightened for a brief moment, then he allowed her to rise.

Bear struggled to sit up, but didn't stop there. Instead, she kept moving until she was standing a solid three feet away from the couch, staring down at the Joker, who merely looked amused. "What the hell was that?" she rasped out, voice low and painful.

He just smiled up at her, sitting his his hands folded innocently in his lap. "I had to check if ya had completely reverted back to the old Teddy Bear. I didn't want to start over, but if we had to…"

A chill slid down Bear's spine as she realized he would have kidnapped her without a second thought if he thought it was necessary. As coldly as possible, she said, "That's not necessary. The old Bear died a month ago at your compound. I don't think she'll ever get the chance to come back."

"You're welcome," the Joker said simply. Bear gaped at him and he shrugged elegantly, spreading long arms to either side. "The new Bear is so much more interesting, wouldnt'cha agree?"

Bear crossed her arms and glared at a spot just over the Joker's head - she knew he would freak out if she turned such a look on him. She spoke to the same spot, unable to look at the green-haired monster reclining comfortably on her sofa. "I'm not trying to be interesting." What she had intended to sound longsuffering simply sounded tired. It didn't matter; that was Bear's most common emotion lately. "All I want to be is alive and left alone."

"I gave ya the first one. Are ya really gonna ask me for the second?"

Even as she told herself not to, Bear snorted again. "Of course I want to be left alone, but I would argue that you 'gave me' anything. _I_ escaped from your compound and got away from you. I don't think you would have let me do that if you had a choice."

The Joker's green eyes glittered as brightly as his metal-plated smile. _Seriously, Bear, what is wrong with you? You said you wanted to survive the night, survive meeting him again, but first, you keep needling him and now, you remind him to his face that you escaped from him before. Are you secretly plotting against yourself? There are easier - and less-painful - ways to die than this…_

* * *

"Yes, let's talk about that," the Joker purred, unaware of his Bear's internal monologue. "The old Bear could never have walked out the way ya did. Well, more like 'climbed down', wasn't it?"

Bear froze, obviously unaware that he had witnessed the whole escape… _Well, not the whole thing,_ he mused darkly. He still had no idea how she had escaped him in the forest, but he would be discovering that tonight. He wouldn't hold the escape against his Teddy Bear, but if she had been able to waltz out, that meant his compound wasn't secure. That was unacceptable. He would fix that.

After all, any unsecured exit was practically an invitation for an unexpected visit from the Bat. The Joker did so hate to be caught unawares. It made him seem like such a poor host.

Pulling himself from thoughts of Batman - a truly endless pondering session if there ever was one - the Joker brought his attention back to the young woman still standing across the low coffee table from himself. It wouldn't be far enough if he decided to escalate things physically once more, but whatever made his little Bear feel more secure…

Casually, the Joker kicked his feet back up on the table and smiled attentively at Bear. Her skin was pale under the naturally bronzed tone and she smoothed her dark hair distractedly. It was a nervous gesture she had developed since he had last seen her. He hated it. "Come on, sweetness. Tell Daddy how ya ran away from home."

That did it. Bear's bottomless brown eyes caught fire and her fists clenched reflexively. There was his Grizzly Bear. She liked to hide when his girl got too far in her own thoughts, but he could bring her out with a few well-chosen words.

"You kidnapped me, killed my co-workers, and tortured me for almost two weeks. I don't know the protocol on this, but I'm pretty sure I don't owe you a fucking explanation."

He _tsk_ ed at her. "Such language. It doesn't sound right coming from a classy lady." She flushed, eyes positively glittering with rage, but the Joker cut in before she could say something he would have to punish her for. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and tucked his fingers under his chin. "And don't pretend ya gave a single _fuck_ about your co-workers. I tested them, did ya know that?"

It sounded like a rhetorical question, but the Joker wasn't in the mood for those tonight. He wanted to hear his Bear speak. After all, it had been too long since he had seen her. When she remained silent, he lifted the shaved spots of his eyebrows at her. She cleared her throat twice before she could answer him. "No, of course I didn't know."

"Of course ya didn't," he grinned back at her. "You're too busy thinkin' of me as the bad guy to admit when I do somethin' good. I asked all of your co-workers one simple question to decide whether they got to live or not: What is Baroness Wells's nickname? If they said 'Bear', they got to live. If they said 'Nessie', I knew they just listened to Markson, who - no offense - hated ya. You're not the best at making friends, are ya, Teddy Bear? That's okay; I'm not, either."

"Wait, you left some of those women alive?"

The Joker hated the hope in her voice. _Despised_ it. What did she care what happened to a group of women who had actively made her life more difficult? With great pleasure, he stomped on the glimmer in her dark eyes. "I don't answer questions, Teddy Bear. Last warning. But since ya looked so cute asking…" he winked at her and she looked disgusted. "No, I didn't let any of them live. They all answered wrong."

"That's sick," his Bear reprimanded.

The Joker nodded along with her judgment, screwing up his face in a way he knew showcased the 'Damaged' script tattooed on his forehead. "I agree. Askin' questions isn't my gimmick. That's more the Riddler's thing." His green gaze cooled as he stared over at her. "But I think ya know all about that. You've met the man, the… heh, the _question_ _mark_ himself…"

He watched the confusion cloud Bear's face as she tried to figure out what he was talking about. As the clouds broke, bringing a ray of realization, he chuckled. "That's riiight! The man on the trip back to Gotham. I had to make sure ya weren't gonna do anything… unwise. He did have some interesting stuff to tell me about whatcha said on the plane, though. Anything you feel like sharing, sweetness?"

He waited patiently for her answer, amusing himself by watching the smooth column of her throat work as she swallowed nervously. The Joker bared his metallic grille at her, crinkling his eyes in a false show of mirth. It was enough to stir her into another brief moment of rebellion.

"He - the _Riddler_ , apparently - asked why I was coming back to Gotham. He asked if it was for a man. I said yes, but that I was going to deal with the problem."

The Joker hummed softly when she had finished her highly-edited story. The Riddler had reveled in Bear's tears, rejoiced in telling the Joker about them, and relaying the thinly-veiled threat she had delivered had likely been the highlight of the puzzle-loving man's existence. "I heard ya were crying, little Bear. So relieved to finally be close to me again?"

"Horrified that I was being blackmailed into getting stuck here again," Bear fired back. "Scared for my sister's safety, preparing to lose my own life… Choose your favorite."

"I hafta admit that I'm fond of all the choices," the Joker sighed, relishing the rage that crossed Teddy Bear's face. "But I don't wanna talk about me, I came here to talk about you. How did ya escape my place, little girl?" Bear clenched her jaw and he tilted his head to the side. "I know ya were untied, I know ya cracked the bottom two hinges on your door, and I know ya passed right by my trick phone to kick out an air vent cover."

A hint of victory flared in Bear's eyes. "So it was a trick phone, then? I knew it. I should have guessed you would have cameras around your compound."

"Of course I do. I need to keep an eye on my men, obviously. But I'm more interested in what happened after ya were outta camera range. I saw ya lower yourself from the ledge and I was there when ya ran into the forest. I chased after ya myself, but I didn't find ya. How did that happen?"

The Clown Prince watched as Bear struggled with herself internally. Finally, she seemed to come to some kind of decision and said, "I climbed a tree."

"Teddy Bear," he said reprovingly.

Bear had the audacity to shrug. "You asked what I did and I told you. It isn't my fault you didn't look up while you were sprinting through the forest."

"That's interesting. I must have my men kill all of those dogs."

"D- dogs?" Bear stammered.

Blithely, the Joker nodded. "Yes, I have a team of dogs who were supposed to track down your scent. They didn't stop at any tree that ya supposedly climbed up. They did spend some time around a downed tree, but nothing that ya woulda been able to climb."

The frustration on Bear's face was a joy to behold. If he could bottle the feelings flying across her face, he would be one happy man. "I hid under a tree. You walked right past me."

"I did?" the Joker asked, feigning surprise. "How clumsy of me. I would say I'll be more careful next time, but there's not gonna be a next time, right, Teddy Bear?"

She pulled her gaze to meet his, eyes abruptly cold and steely as he had ever seen them. "No, there isn't going to be a next time, because you'll never get me back to your compound alive again. I'll force you to kill me before I let that happen."

The Joker took in a shaking breath, letting his head fall back onto the couch with a smile of pure ecstasy on his face. When he could loll his head forward enough to look up at Bear, he knew exactly what he looked like: green eyes blazing in a pale face, tongue darting out to slide across red lips and gleaming silver teeth as he purred out, "Oh, baby Bear… There's only one thing more dangerous than a question, and that's a challenge. You've just given me the best challenge I've gotten in a long time."

Bear made a noise of complete vexation. "Allow me to lower the tension by going back to a question: What exactly is it going to take for you to leave me alone?"

The Joker tilted his head to the side. "To leave ya alone, Teddy Bear, I would need something more interesting to come along. That hasn't happened for a long time." He allowed his tone to grow as sharp as his gaze. "I do have one promising lead, though… A woman who lives alone in Dallas, going by the name of Victoria Wells."

* * *

Bear felt like she had been punched in the stomach, all of the air in her lungs suddenly disappearing. "You wouldn't," she breathed with what little air she managed to take in again.

The Joker's smile spread even wider, taking on a quality that seemed to be almost orgasmic. She wasn't even ready to think about that. "Bear, Bear, _Bear_ … Another challenge? Must be my lucky day."

"It really must be," Bear replied dryly, "Because it certainly isn't mine."

He threw his head back, letting that rasping chuckle out while Bear fought the shivers that tried to march down her arms and spine. When the Joker raised his head once more, his face was without a single trace of a smile. "Oh, Teddy Bear, ya don't know how lucky ya are. If ya were anyone else, ya woulda been dead before ya even stepped out of my club."

"So you're planning on killing my mother because you didn't kill me? Or are you going to kill us both?" Bear managed to keep her voice from shaking, but it was a close thing.

The Joker tipped his head to the side, squinting green eyes at her. "Why would I kill her? No, I just said she was almost as interesting as you and your sister." He straightened back up, the almost cute, curious expression disappearing. "If ya want to keep me from seeing how… heh, how _resilient_ your mother is, ya might want to stick around and listen to my plans.

"Plans…" Bear repeated, letting the word hang there. If her family was on the line, she wasn't going to risk pissing him off by asking questions.

He smiled, almost like he knew what she was trying to do. "There are gonna be a few changes around here, Little Bear. A few conditions I have if you're gonna keep walkin' around Gotham like a normal person."

Bear fought back the urge to gag at that. It was an accurate shot he had taken, but he didn't even seem to realize the hit that he had scored - or did he? The smirking little look he tossed in her direction seemed to say that he had said it on purpose. Bear wasn't a normal person, not anymore. She never would be again, thanks to the thing sitting in front of her now.

Brushing his electric green hair back with ring-adorned fingers, the Joker fixed her with his direct stare. It was disconcerting, and Bear soon found her gaze dropping to the stylized J etched into the very top of his cheekbone. It crinkled slightly as he spread his lips in a metallic half-smile, half-snarl.

"Here's what's gonna happen, Teddy Bear. You're gonna be at my disposal from now on. When I leave ya a gift, I expect a thank-you. A text would be good, with a picture. I want ya to keep being careful, but ya could leave this place after dark once in a while. Give my boys somethin' to do, right? And if anyone - _anyone_ \- tries to mess with ya, give me a call. It'll be taken care of _immediately_. Last thing, I want ya to make an appearance at the Crown at least once a week."

Bear's eyes snapped to his, which now held a triumphant gleam. "That's right," he said softly. "I wanna see ya at least once a week with my- own- eyes. Think ya can do that, Bear? Otherwise, I can tell your mother everything that ya been up to here in Gotham. I bet she would have some things to say about the choices you've made."

Just as she got ready to let loose a scathing retort, the Joker waved a finger at her. "Don't even think about it, Teddy Bear. I've let ya get away with a lot tonight, but I'm gettin' to the end of my patience. Those are my terms. Whaddaya say?"

Bear took a deep breath, meeting his eyes with a feeling she was signing a deal with the Devil himself. "I agree."

"Wonderful," the Joker drew out, beaming so hard his eyes squinted - though, as usual, there was no real emotion behind the expression. "Come here."

"What? No," Bear denied before thinking about it.

His face hardened. "I said, come here." He held out a pale, long-fingered hand and Bear took it reluctantly. He swung her out and around the coffee table, and she did her best not to fight him. When she was on the same side as him, the Joker stood and pulled her into his arms, bringing his face far too close to hers.

Bear winced back, but he chuckled softly, holding her in place as he began dragging his mouth along her cheek. Bear's mind flashed, bringing her the memory of him making the same motion an eternity ago as she stood in his club. He was slashing his lipstick up her face, marking her as he had back then.

She began fighting in earnest, but he stopped her, breathing along her jaw, "I wanna do this, Little Bear, and you're gonna let me. Not because ya like it, even if I think ya do, but because you've upset me. You've fought me a lot tonight, asked a lotta questions, and this is how you're gonna make up for it. Now, be a good girl and hold still."

With a feeling of utter helplessness, Bear stood passively as possible and let him continue, blinking the tears that sprang to her eyes. When he had finally finished, he held her chin in an iron grip, looking into her eyes from inches away and smiling his crazed smile.

"That's my good little Teddy Bear," he crooned in praise. "Isn't this so much easier than fighting me?"

She kept her gaze firm, unwavering as she beat down the nearly overwhelming urge to spit a reply at him. He grinned even wider, patting her cheek. "So much fire. It's gonna come out soon, Little Bear. I'm counting on it."

The Joker finally let her go, but turned back to press a kiss to her forehead, the motion almost gentle. "Goodnight, Teddy Bear. I'll see ya _real_ soon."

With that threat - or was it a promise? - he walked out of her front door. Bear caught a glimpse of Frost standing outside, meeting her eyes for a split second with an expression of pity on his face.

It was too much. As soon as the door closed, Bear raced for the bathroom, vomiting violently into the toilet bowl before scrubbing her face until it burned. Once she was free of the Joker's marks, she turned her attention to the bloodstains in her carpet. She knew that was a lost cause, but it was still a better distraction than anything else she had on hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wondering: yes, I did mix a little bit of criminal justice theory into Bear's thinking about the possible implications of a criminal vacuum in Gotham. It's not verified (as far as I'm aware) but it is interesting to think about! 
> 
> Also, I wanted to clarify the song title. If you - for some reason - have not heard Fall Out Boy's 'I Don't Care', a major part of the chorus says, "I don't care what you think, as long as it's about me." I just feel this sums up the Joker's reasoning, especially in this particular part of his time with Bear. I've gotten a few questions about past chapter titles, so I figured I would just give you the reason behind the title here.


	7. You're Going Down

Bear was tired. Not physically, but in every other way. It was mid-November in Gotham; a dull, dreary time of year where everything seemed to be cold and gray before the cheery facade of Christmas was applied to the city. The city's air, the ever-present filth, and the constant threat of the Joker seemed to stab at Bear exposed skin every second of every day. She was exhausted and hurting, privately beginning to wonder how much longer she would be able to handle the sensory attacks before she was simply done.

She was at work when everything hit at once. All of a sudden, Bear was gasping for air and her muscles were aching. She had to move, to get out. She stood up, flinging her chair backward as she rushed away from the bank of cubicles where she worked. She pushed down the narrow aisle, fighting her way toward the closest exit.

"Bear?" a soft voice asked, cutting through the haze of angry muttering.

Bear pulled up short and looked over to see Maggie staring at her with a strange mix of horror and compassion in her eyes. "Hello, Maggie," Bear greeted.

Maggie's blue eyes were wide as she stammered out, "Bear, I didn't know you were- Why did you-? Are you-?" She cleared her throat and seemed to collect herself. "How are you doing?"

The question was everything Bear wasn't prepared to talk about, and her eyes soon welled with tears. Maggie stepped forward and gently ushered Bear into an office, even as Bear tried to swallow her mortification - she hated crying in public.

The office they entered was large and airy, unfamiliar except for the furniture. Maggie steered her into a cushy chair Bear recognized from Maggie's last office and - even as miserable as she was - Bear had to smile. "Some promotion, huh?" she croaked out.

Maggie's lips twitched. "Yeah, they're taking care of me. But I don't want to talk about me. Are you all right? Why are you back in Gotham?"

The prompting was minimal, and she knew Maggie wouldn't be offended if the conversation was cut short, but Bear blurted out the entire story of her return to Gotham and stood waiting. "He had your sister?" Maggie asked, horrified. Bear nodded mutely and the other woman shook her head in disgust. "That loathsome snake!"

"Watch out," Bear mumbled, unable to help herself. "He'll get mad if he hears you talking about him that way."

"How is he going to hear me?" The words were full of challenge, but the tone was not. Maggie's question was blandly gentle, the kind of voice one would use to talk a jumper down from a ledge. Bear wanted to be offended, but Maggie was so different from the typical flood of neutrality in her life that she longed to sink into the comfort.

And so, Bear shrugged, trying to force some life back into her eyes. "He knows everything. I'm pretty sure he has cameras and bugs in my apartment. It wouldn't surprise me if he has them here as well."

Maggie shook her head. "Bear, I can promise you that he doesn't have any sort of foothold in this building. In fact, this is probably the safest place for you in all of Gotham."

"What? Why?" Bear perked up a bit at the idea of safety, even if only at work, but Maggie's answer was mysterious enough that it didn't help.

"I can't really tell you about it, but there are forces at play in keeping this place Joker-free."

Bear sunk back into the seat Maggie had forced her into earlier. As much as she respected Maggie, there was just no way for any place to be totally safe from the Joker - from anyone, really. Despite the woman's best intentions, Maggie was probably citing a monthly security sweep or something similar. Nice, and a good idea, but unable to keep out a force as considerable as the Joker.

And so, with Maggie smiling at her in that comforting, hope-filled way, Bear simply nodded and gave a half-hearted smile. "Thanks, Maggie."

Maggie shrugged and patted Bear on the shoulder. "You don't believe me. That's okay. With what you've been through, I can understand. Can I ask how long ago all of this happened? When exactly did you come back to Gotham?"

Bear took a quavering breath, trying to get control of her emotions once more. "It was late October when I moved here again, so… less than a month ago." She gave a shaky laugh. "It hasn't even been a month! It feels like forever. What am I going to do, Maggie? I don't think I can take this anymore!"

"Okay, Baroness, I need you to take a couple of deep breaths. Breathe in for four beats, hold it for four beats, breathe out for four beats, and hold it for four beats. Do it a couple of times while I get you a water, okay?"

Squeezing Bear's shoulder, she moved across the spacious room and bent down to rummage through a mini-fridge. Without eyes on her - even non-judgmental ones like Maggie's - Bear found it easier and easier to follow the stress-management technique. Soon, she was feeling much more solid, not as dizzy and panicked. Her heartbeat was even returning to a normal pace.

Maggie returned and handed her a cool bottle of water, taking a seat next to Bear rather than across the well-worn desk. "Not that you shouldn't be freaked out by the situation, because you definitely should be, but I have to ask: Why is all of this hitting you now? Did something else happen since you came back here? Has the Joker made contact with you?"

"Yeah, you could say that," Bear told her, giving a brief summary of everything that had happened at her apartment with Skater and Crew Cut, including the subsequent conversation with the Joker and his terms for her.

Maggie was suitably shocked. "You can't be serious! Has he seemed to keep up with what he said he would do so far?"

"Sadly, yes," Bear affirmed. "I was at my favorite grocery store a few weeks ago and I noticed that the cashier had rung up one of my items twice, so I went back in to ask about it. The poor kid panicked and begged me to have mercy on him and not to tell the Joker about it. I told him I wouldn't, but how am I supposed to know what he sees and hears? He could have spies everywhere!"

"I'm not saying you're overreacting," Maggie said soothingly, "But it's highly doubtful that he's watching you that closely. He's a criminal mastermind. He probably needs most of his men to keep his business interests working, not to follow a woman around."

"That's what I thought, too, but I haven't seen the cashier since! He hasn't been into work in weeks and I don't want to tell the grocery store, but he's probably dead!" Bear could hear the growing hysteria in her own voice, but was at a total loss on how to dial it back down.

"Okay, let's handle this a different way," Maggie suggested. "Why don't you start from the conversation after Skater and Crew Cut broke in and tell me everything you feel comfortable talking about? I swear to you on everything I hold dear, there is not a single bug in this office. Vent to me, Bear. You can't keep bottling all of this up. It isn't healthy."

Bear nodded, hesitantly at first, but with growing determination. Her mind flashed through the weeks since that night in her apartment. "There have been a lot of gifts, things he's left in my apartment. I'm supposed to thank him, so I usually send a picture of myself holding whatever it is and smiling. He seems to like those."

"And what kind of gifts does he send?"

"They can be all over the place. Sometimes it's flowers and jewelry kind of stuff, but more often, it's playing cards, clothes, notes, a slash of lipstick on the mirror… Anything to let me know that he's been in my apartment."

Maggie hummed softly. "And what would happen if you didn't send a thank-you?"

Bear shivered. "He gets angry. Really, really angry."

"How so?"

"I got home really late one night. I had to stay here to finish up a project and didn't get home until nearly 9. He had left a pair of shoes on my kitchen table and I sent him a thank-you picture, but the next day, I got home and my apartment was trashed. Drawers were pulled out, pictures were taken off of the walls, everything was thrown on the floor… it was bad. The worst part was that he had left a picture on my pillow. It was of me in my car the night before and I was smiling. There was lipstick across the picture, made to look like my throat had been slashed."

Maggie's sharp inhale was all the confirmation Bear needed. As the renewed knowledge of the danger she lived in washed over her, she closed her eyes and made an effort to keep breathing steadily.

"He's been by a couple of times since then," she continued without prodding, startling even herself. "Not that I've seen him, thankfully, but there have been other gifts. He gave me a dress a few days before Halloween…"

In her mind's eye, Bear could see the dress. It was slinky and black, clinging to every curve she possessed, putting each on display. The hem hit far above the knee, and Bear's first thought was that she would flash every person around while she got into and out of cars - or even down off of a high barstool. She had hung it in the back of her closet, but her phone had begun to ring only minutes later.

_"Hello?"_ she had asked, hating the hesitancy in her voice. After all, she already knew exactly who was on the other end of the phone.

_"Well hello, Teddy Bear,"_ the Joker's voice cooed, seeping from the phone like an oil spill as he confirmed Bear's suspicions. _"I saw what ya did with your new dress. What a shame. Ya aren't even going to show Daddy what it looks like when you're wearing it?"_

Bear had taken a breath, trying to tamp down anger. _"Ignoring the fact that you're watching me - creepy though that is - I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I just want to lounge around. Can you leave me alone for just a little bit while I relax?"_

_"I got ya a present, little Bear,"_ the Joker said then, the warning plain in his tone. _"Ya don't seem very grateful at all, to me. Maybe I need to come over there so ya can show me your gratitude in person?"_

_"No!"_ Bear responded, a bit too quickly. _"I mean, that's all right. Just tell me where the camera is and I'll make sure to give you a show."_

She had tried to sound a little flirty with the offer, hating herself all the while, but he simply laughed. _"Right, I'll just tell ya where my camera is so that it can 'mysteriously' stop working soon. I don't think so, sweetness. How about ya send me a nice little picture of yourself wearing the dress? I'll even agree not to watch the camera until I get it. I do… heh,_ love _surprises."_

_"Right,"_ Bear said dryly. _"I'll get right on that."_

_"If I don't have a picture sent to my phone in the next two minutes, I'll head over to your place, how about that?"_ With that last threat, delivered in a light, sing-song type voice, the Joker had hung up.

Bear had stared down at her phone and made a face at it. When that made her feel marginally better, she had shot a middle finger to the room at large, jumping when her phone gave the little _ding_ of a newly-delivered message.

_'I saw that,_ ' the message had informed her.

_'You said you weren't watching,'_ she shot back immediately.

_'You know I love to watch you, Teddy Bear.'_ It had been followed immediately by another message, this one simply warning, _'80 seconds.'_

Needless to say, the picture had been sent.

The Joker had called back after he opened the picture. " _Looks sexy, little Bear. Positively edible. Wear it to the Crown on Halloween."_

" _I was going to go a couple of days after Halloween,"_ Bear had protested feebly, knowing that Halloween was the Joker's favorite time of year and that he would be unbearable until the day had passed. " _You know, it'll be busy and I hate the traffic…"_

" _You're coming on Halloween or I'll consider our deal void. And if that happens, my Teddy Bear…"_ His voice had turned darker, softer, and more menacing, all at once. " _I'll be coming to get ya for an entirely different reason. Just as enjoyable for me, of course, but I don't think you're gonna like it very much…"_

" _Fine, Halloween it is, but I'm not wearing this dress,"_ Bear had shot back, trying to bargain with him.

The Joker had sent shivers coursing down her spine with his signature chuckle. " _Heh heh heh heeehhhhh… What part of this makes ya think this is a negotiation, doll? Wear the dress - on Halloween night - at The Jester's Crown - or… Well, I think I would just burn all of your other clothes. I'd replace 'em, of course, but with ones that make that dress look like a nun's habit. Do we understand each other?"_

He had hung up then, never giving her a chance to answer. She had gone to the club on Halloween, wearing the dress - and a pair of silky black undershorts. The booth she had sat in the first time was reserved for her. Bear spent the night sitting in the booth, eyeing the dance floor uncomfortably and trying to avoid the gaze of the Joker, who was watching her avidly.

The most awkward interaction of the evening had, surprisingly, come from Frost. He had come to her table and set a glass down in front of her. " _Compliments of the boss,"_ he said simply.

Bear stared up at him incredulously. " _The boss. The one blackmailing me to be here. Right. I'm sure you'll understand when I choose not to drink this."_

" _Bear, trust me. You need to drink it. You'll offend him if you don't."_

" _Offend him?"_ Bear's shrill question had attracted some attention, and she hurriedly lowered the volume to an unpleasant hiss. " _I'm not exactly worried about offending him. I'm more worried about whatever is in that glass other than alcohol."_

" _If he was going to drug you, he wouldn't be so obvious about it,"_ Frost said tonelessly.

" _Big comfort,"_ Bear had scoffed, but stiffened when she caught a glimpse of Frost's face - he had kept it in the shadows for the majority of their conversation up to this point. He looked completely horrible, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks not helped by the bruise on his jaw and the strange angle his nose was sitting at. " _What the hell happened to you?"_

Frost's shoulders had tightened. " _The boss doubts my loyalty. He's going to do a lot worse to you if you keep arguing about this."_ Bear raised an eyebrow and he sighed. " _Look, no one said you have to drain the glass, but at least pretend to sip at it. Take a mouthful and fake-sneeze it onto the floor if you have to, but you should know that he never touched it. This was made by a bartender and brought over by me."_

Bear had stayed silent for a long moment, watching Frost and puzzling over whether or not to press the issue of his treatment. Something told her he was pushing his luck by staying as long as he had, so she had forced a smile and picked up the glass. " _Well, why didn't you say that from the beginning?"_

True to Frost's word, the drink had not been drugged, and the Joker had never made any other contact with her. At the end of her required time at the club, she had retrieved her purse and keys and walked out the front door, no questions asked.

When Bear had finished recounting this story to Maggie, the woman was obviously fighting back a smile. "The attitude is wonderful," she praised, pausing to ask, "But is it safe for you to be so belligerent toward him? The man is dangerous, no doubt about it."

"Of course," Bear said with a shrug. "The worst he can do is torture me again, and it sounds like he's thinking about doing that anyway." She laughed to soften the cynicism in her words, but she was the only one. Maggie simply continued watching her with a concerned expression on her face.

"It doesn't matter anyway," Bear said, sobering up. "I've already pushed him too far, and I don't think there's any coming back from it."

Maggie looked almost nauseated, but did her best to give an encouraging sort of look. "Go on, Bear. What did he do that was so terrible?"

Bear swallowed, opting to look at the dirty, tannish-gray of the closed blinds rather than meet the eyes of her ex-boss. "I didn't go to his club last week." Maggie stayed silent, but Bear could still feel her reaction in the rising tension of the air. "It isn't that I planned to rebel or anything. I was sick. It was a bug, a 24-hour flu sort of thing. I couldn't stop throwing up long enough to make a phone call, let alone to sit for hours at a dance club." Her voice dropped to an introspective mutter as she mused, "I left it too long, that was my fault. I shouldn't have waited until Saturday night. I should have gone during the week and just resigned myself to being tired the next day."

"So you never showed up," Maggie said in summation. "Maybe not the best thing you could have done..."

"Oh, I texted to let him know I was sick," Bear said, though her voice lacked even a hint of defensiveness. "I even sent him a picture. I looked terrible. But it wasn't enough."

"And how did he respond?"

"To my text? He didn't. Never sent anything back at all. But for me not coming to the Crown, he had plenty to say about that."

"You've spoken to him? Over the phone, I assume?"

"No," Bear answered shortly, dashing the hope on Maggie's face. "He didn't even try to call me. I got home from work last Tuesday and my apartment had been trashed. Not like someone had broken in and was looking for the best stuff to steal, more like they had opened every drawer and cabinet and thrown the contents wherever they wanted. It was bad. I started cleaning it up right away, figuring that he had something to do with it and I wanted to make sure he hadn't put any other video or listening devices in my place."

Between Maggie's sympathetic listening and her own desire to distance herself from the humiliation of telling everything that had happened, Bear let her mind slip into the memories of that day.

_Bear had been nearly an hour into cleaning when she found a picture frame - one that had previously housed her favorite picture of her family - smashed on the floor. It was empty, and Bear knew that the Joker had left it as a message. Swearing, Bear pitched the heavy frame at the wall of her apartment, where it connected with a loud noise and put a dent in the drywall. A muffled shouting came from the apartment beside hers and Bear fought down the desire to shout back. The man was new, and word of the Joker's overprotective nature where she was concerned had either not gotten to him yet or he didn't believe it. Bear was trying to keep the peace, not wanting to get him killed, but the man was noisy and rude. Despite his own noise he made complaints or yelled when she made any noise at all. He was an asshole, but she didn't think he deserved to die because of it._

_She continued cleaning, working her way through the mess on the floor and keeping the camera(s) in her apartment in mind whenever she felt the urge to react to something. Someone knocked heavily on her door and, sighing, Bear stood to answer it. She wasn't in the mood to deal with her ever-angry neighbor, but if he really wanted to confront her, she had more than a few words to say to him. When she opened the door, however, she didn't find the dark-haired, paunchy man standing there, Instead, the Joker himself was at her door, beaming at her with his eyes squinted so far as to be almost closed. As fast as she could, Bear stepped back and tried to slam the door on him, frightened by the impersonal rage burning in his mostly-closed eyes, but his hand shot out, keeping the door propped open._

"Oh, Teddy Bear..." _he had rasped in a sing-song tone that shot chills up her spine._ "You've been a very naughty girl and I'm-"

_Before he could continue, the sound of a door being thrown open echoed through the cramped hall._ "For fuck's sake! If you people are going to play your sick little sex games, can you please do it where I don't have to hear you..?" _The man's voice trailed off as he stepped out of his apartment and caught sight of the Joker and Frost._ "Oh, good, you're both banging her. Even better. And you're dressed as the Joker! You people are fucking sick, you know tha-"

_The Joker, baring his metal teeth in an odd, silent snarl, drew his gold- and purple-plated handgun and shot the man before he could even finish his train of thought. He immediately turned back to Bear, voice low and dangerous._ "You're gonna let us in, little Bear. I don't have the patience for arguments today."

_Bear had stepped back before she could stop herself, and retreated as far into the apartment as possible. When all three of them stood inside, staring at each other, she asked in a shaking voice,_ "Are you going to kill me, too?"

"Kill ya? No. I've put too much effort inta ya to kill ya now. But I do have other ways to get ya to behave." _The Joker's words would usually have been enough to make Bear blindingly furious, but the crime lord hadn't been his usual self throughout their conversation and she had sensed they were very close to a dangerous breaking point. The green-haired man hadn't even cracked his patented smile or made any crude jokes. Something was up._

_His green eyes traveled the room, noting the mess still puddled on every surface, and his upper lip curled back, displaying his metallic teeth once more._ "We gotta talk, little girl, and I don't feel like doing it here. We're movin' this operation to a different locale. Come on."

"No," _Bear denied, as firmly as she could._

_The Joker, already to the door of her apartment, froze. Wide-eyed, Frost signaled for her to move, but Bear shook her head at him slightly, pressing her back against the far wall of her living room. After a beat of dead silence, the Joker turned, eyes glinting dangerously._ "What did you say," _he asked flatly._

"I- I'm not going anywhere with you. I told you once that I won't go back to your compound. I meant it."

_His mouth stretched, but his eyes held the same dead, detached fire. Bear gulped a little, trying desperately to moisten her bone-dry mouth. Normally, the Joker's face held a bit of softness for her, a slightly indulgent nature. It had even retained that touch of personality while he was torturing her. There wasn't a hint of that now._

"After everything you've done... All the ways you've _royally_ fucked up, and ya wanna tell me where ya won't go?" _He snapped out a laugh, loud and merciless and without a single drop of humor. Bear jumped and saw the savage victory flare in his green eyes._ "I wanted it to be a surprise, but I guess you're gonna fuck- that- up- too. Frost, show her."

_Keeping his face as coolly impersonal as he could, Frost stepped closer to Bear, drawing a tablet from his pocket. He handed it to Bear, who accepted it and braced herself before looking down at the screen. What she saw made her stomach flip._

"Rhys?" _she had whispered, horrified._

"What'sa matter, Teddy Bear? Didn't think I knew what you were doing in Texas?" _Bear looked up into the Joker's cold gaze, meeting it with the fire in her own eyes. He shook his head slowly, maintaining eye contact all the while._ "Ah, ah, little girl. Ya don't wanna be starting anything with me today. Not only would I be _personally_ offended, but I'm sure I would take it out on poor Rhys, there."

"What are you going to do to him?"

"Frost."

_The command was simple and sharp, and Frost grabbed Bear's left arm in an iron grip. Holding her just above the elbow, he dragged her over to the Joker, who fished in the pocket of his purple leather duster. He pulled out a rectangle of thick, white paper covered in a layer of film. It looked for all the world like a child's stick-on tattoo, but there was no design on the paper. The Joker busied himself in cutting the sleeve from Bear's dress shirt, the one she had worn to work at the office that day. The evil smile he had given her before lowering the sharp blade to her skin was enough to keep her still, even in Frost hadn't been holding her._

_When her arm was free of fabric, the Joker flipped it over, exposing the soft, paler skin that stretched from the inside of her elbow to the inside of her wrist._ "Oh, Bear?" _he murmured enticingly, waiting until she met his eyes to smile in that snarling way he had._ "This is gonna hurt _real bad._ "

_In a smooth motion, the Joker peeled the plastic coating from the paper and pressed it firmly to Bear's skin. At first, she felt nothing, but an all-consuming burning sensation soon began, growing in intensity until she felt ready to scream. Knowing that a response was what the Joker wanted, Bear bit back her pain, holding her breath until her vision began to grow filmy and white at the edges._

_After a seeming eternity had passed, the pain began to subside and the Joker grinned broadly._ "That oughta do it!" _he had crowed, peeling the paper from her forearm. The pain renewed - not as intensely as it had been, but close enough to keep her vision from solidifying._

_When Bear could look down at her forearm, she had to fight back another scream. There, on the otherwise unblemished skin, was a question mark. It was formed of a burn, one severe enough so that blistered bubbles had risen to the surface._

"Do ya like it? It's one of the Riddler's acid patches, heat-activated. He sends it with his regards. I don't like ya havin' someone else's mark on your skin, but it oughta do the trick in reminding you to stop with the questions." _Blinded by fury, Bear tore her gaze from the mutilated skin and turned her hate-filled stare at the Joker instead._

"Now," _he had said, gripping her jaw with his purple-gloved hand._ "Are ya gonna agree to come to my compound, or am I gonna have to cut this mark out of your skin one square inch at a time?"

Bear was broken from her reverie by a small squeak from Maggie, who looked embarrassed when Bear glanced over. The woman looked horrified and Bear silently raised the sleeve of her shirt in answer to the unasked question. In the few days since it had happened, the angry red blisters formed by the acid had faded, but the entire area was still pinkish, a silvery question mark clearly visible amid the sea of abused tissue.

Maggie looked somewhat relieved by the sight of the Bear's arm, but not much. "So, you did end up going with him? Or was he bluffing?"

Bear smiled, but knew it held no amusement whatsoever. "The Joker never bluffs," she answered tonelessly. "I went with him."

_They had pulled up to the Joker's compound in record time. Bear had never known how close the place truly was, having traveled eclectically through the woods and using a cab to get back to her workplace the only time she had been at the Joker's hideout. It was in a good location, she admitted objectively to herself. Unbelievably close to the outskirts of Gotham City, the compound still managed to be in a section of thick woods and away from any areas that were too highly-populated or that encouraged campers or hikers._

_The Joker had sat in the back of his infamous purple Lamborghini with Bear during the trip. Though he was still obviously unhappy, he kept his hand on her knee through the entire drive._ "I encourage rumors about wildlife in this forest. Cuts down on the curious wilderness explorers," _he explained, obviously proud of himself. His voice took on a saccharine tone as he continued with,_ "Ever since ya got away from me, I've spread some news about an escaped bear. The woods have never been emptier."

_Sick of him, Bear pushed his large, pale, tattooed hand off of her knee, but he only moved to clamp his palm over her mouth. Bear knew the cartoonish mouth was over her own, but it didn't seem to bring him the joy it usually did. Instead, he squeezed her jaw._ "Save the teeth for everyone else, Teddy Bear. I'm not in the mood today."

_The rest of the blessedly-short drive had been in silence. As they climbed from the Lamborghini, purple paint polished to a high gleam, the Joker had kept hold of her injured arm - above the elbow, where her skin didn't feel as though it were melting off, but she recognized the veiled threat. Frost had led the way through a different entrance than Bear had assumed they would take, then proceeded to take a winding, confusing path through darkened hallways where men spoke in hushed voices. When they saw the Joker, they stopped talking altogether._

_Eventually, they ended up in a small, bare room with two doors: the one through which they had entered and one set in the wall exactly opposite._

"Now, Teddy Bear, I know I promised ya a conversation, but since ya don't listen to me anymore, maybe you'd like a different kind of... heh, visual."

_The Joker ripped open the opposing door and pushed Bear through roughly. Frost followed them into the black hole of a room and a light blazed to life, temporarily blinding Bear. When her vision had returned enough, Bear found herself in a plain room, just as small as the one they had been in previously. The only addition - small, but chilling - was the drain set into the banked concrete of the floor. There was a simple chair in the middle of the room, centered exactly over the drain. Rhys sat slumped in the chair, tension in his shoulders stemming from where his hands were cuffed behind him._

"Rhys..." _she had whispered._

_His head tipped up, long, carefully-gelled hair flipping back from where it had been hanging over his bruised face. It was stereotypical and cliché, unoriginal as anything Bear had ever seen, but she was still terrified for two reasons: first, she could think of a hundred movies with this scenario, and none of them ended well for the bound man in the chair. Secondly, the Joker hated clichés_. _If he was doing something this plain to start with, it could only mean that he had something a bit more... flashy for the way this scenario would end._

_Rather than run to Rhys like every less-than-intelligent female lead in any number of movies, Bear stayed firmly where she was._ "What are you planning to do with him?"

"Who is that, sweetness?" _the Joker asked innocently, pretending to look around curiously and then showing theatre-level shock when his green gaze landed on Rhys._ "Oh, him! Ha, ha, haaa... Well, he isn't important enough to be a bargaining chip, is he?"

"Of course not," _Bear answered as coolly as she could manage. She knew that to admit Rhys was important to her was to assure that he would used to blackmail her. It didn't make the betrayal on Rhys' face any easier to bear, however._

"Well, then he's just gonna be a pretty backdrop while the two of us have a conversation." _The Joker's face lost any hint of warmth it had regained while he spoke._ "Ya didn't come to the Crown last week, Teddy Bear."

"Yes, I was sick," _Bear explained, trying to keep her voice as blandly patient as possible._ "I sent you a text message explaining what was going on. I guess you didn't get it."

"Oh, I got it, little Bear. But it isn't an excuse."

_Bear frowned before she could help herself. His look of displeasure was enough to bring back her need to be polite._ "I'm sorry, Mr. J. Want me to come twice this week to make up for it?"

_With a single step forward, he had gripped her hair at the roots and used it as a lever to drop her to her knees._ "Did I say I wanted ya to make it up to me? No. I want ya to show up when you're supposed to the first time so we don't havta have these little meetings." _He tugged at the fistful of hair he had, making Bear wince as tears filled her eyes._ "Now, I know I've been a little less-than strict with ya, Teddy Bear, so I'm gonna let this first incident slide. But if ya ever skip out on me again, I know where little Rhys lives and my men have no problem... heh, retrieving him for me."

_He stared over her head for a long moment, crazed green eyes distant. The pressure of Bear's kneecaps on the cold concrete floor made her shift a little, bringing his attention back to her. A wild look crossed his face and he tugged her hair upward suddenly. Bear struggled to her feet as quickly as possible, knowing that he would try to drag her to her feet if she paused too long. All the while, he stared at her, a smile quirking one side of his red-painted mouth until it caught the other, stretching his lips in a manic grin._

"Tell ya what," _he had purred, beaming at her so hard that the 'J' etched on his cheekbone scrunched up._ "I'm such a... heh, such a _good guy_ that I'm gonna let ya have a minute alone with your _boy toy_. Isn't that nice of me?"

"Exceedingly," _Bear whispered, hoping to keep the sarcasm out of her tone._

_Using the hand still anchored in her hair, the Joker pulled her even closer. She was pressed up against his body now, the lapels of his silk-lined suit jacket chilling her exposed collarbone. There was nowhere to look except for his face; it filled her entire vision. When he spoke, it was little more than the hiss of a slight exhale, but she was close enough to catch what he said._ "If I catch even a hint of ya showing him affection, little Bear, I'm gonna murder him. I'll cut pieces off of him until he collapses, then I'll stuff whatever's left and keep it around for ya to spend time with."

_Bear stared at him, utterly horrified, but he broke his insane grin into an even crazier laugh. It burst out of him at a volume she hadn't been expecting, and it made Bear jump violently._

_He laughed even harder at that, then threw her toward Rhys' chair as the expression faded from his pale face._ "Go, talk, remember... Ya got five minutes to come back out to me or you'll be spending the night here with me. And Bear?" _He waited until she glanced at him reluctantly before smiling widely and adding,_ "I don't know if I'd ever wanna let ya go after we spent that long together."

_With that warning, he turned and left. Frost followed his boss, leaving Bear and Rhys alone together - though she had no doubts that he had cameras somewhere watching every move either of them made._

_Keeping the eyes on them in mind, Bear walked slowly and deliberately to Rhys before speaking._ "Rhys! Rhys... I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve to get sucked up in this mess. I'm going to make sure you get out of here. I promise. Did he hurt you?"

"You can cut the act, you know," _Rhys said bluntly, voice cold and uncaring._ "I know exactly what you people are up to."

"Up to?" _Bear repeated stupidly._ "What are you talking about?"

"I'm not an idiot, Wells. I know how stuff like this works. He tortures me, makes me feel like there's no hope, acts like he's doing all of it for revenge, then he brings in a friendly face. Someone I feel like I can trust, someone who gives me hope. They - or, in this case, you - find out how I'm doing, which techniques hurt the worst, which ones made me almost spill my guts, whatever else you want to know. I'm not going to fall for it." _He laughed derisively, though whether it was meant toward Bear or himself, she didn't know._ "It's really sick, you know? I thought you were a great person. I really liked you. And then I find out that this is who you really are."

_Feeling cut to the quick, Bear shook her head and grabbed one of Rhys' arms, jerking away sharply at his gasp of pain._ "I'm not doing that, Rhys. I'm not working with the Joker! I came back here from Dallas because he was threatening my sister, threatening me. I don't know why he has this obsession with me, but I definitely didn't choose this!"

"Please," _Rhys said dryly._ "You aren't on the same side as the Joker, but he calls you 'Teddy Bear' and 'little girl'? And you let him! That doesn't sound like he's keeping you against your will to me."

_The skepticism and weariness in Rhys' voice broke Bear's heart. Tears rose to her eyes, this time caused by emotional pain rather than physical._ "Rhys..."

"Save it, Wells. Better get back out there to your boyfriend before your fake 'five minutes' are up. Be sure to tell him that you couldn't get anything out of me. Make sure he knows that he didn't break me."

_With that declaration, Rhys deliberately closed his eyes, hiding the blue gaze that had always been friendly to Bear, even when no one else was. Knowing that he was right about the time, Bear straightened up and made her way back over to the door. A soft knock later and she was let into the anteroom._

"Oh, Bear…" Maggie said softly, compassion thick in her tone.

Bear, to her horror, burst into heaving sobs. "I just really liked him, Maggie. He was one of the only people back in Dallas who was decent to me. We were friends… At least, I thought we were. I could handle him hating me because I got him into this mess, but I can't stand him thinking I'm working with the Joker."

"I know, honey," Maggie soothed, sympathy thick in her tone. "You valued his opinion and he believed that you had turned on him in the worst way. That stings. Do you know what happened to him?"

Bear shrugged, sniffling horribly. "I'm not sure. The Joker said Rhys would be released after they had a 'conversation'. I'm pretty sure he's home, but it's not like he would give me a call or anything."

"Hang on," Maggied said, striding over to her desk and typing frantically on the keyboard of her sleek new computer. "Says here that he missed a few days of work with no logged excuse or doctor's note, but he showed up for his scheduled shift today. Sounds like he made it back with no major issues."

Trying to calm her rapid breathing, Bear nodded. "I just _hate_ this!" she burst out. "How am I supposed to live, knowing that he can do things like this any time he wants?!"

Maggie crossed the room once more to perch on a chair next to Bear's. "As unhelpful as it is, you aren't supposed to. The Joker wants you isolated, off-balance, and compliant. This whole conversation has had me worried. You sounded like you were in shock, but now that you've realized your situation is unacceptable, you can start fighting back."

"And how am I supposed to do that?" Bear scoffed. "He knows where all my friends work, he knows my mom's address, he's kidnapped my sister before… What's to stop him from doing it again? And maybe this time, he'll kill them, too! I don't know how to fight this!"

"Easy," Maggie responded matter-of-factly. "With help. Bear, do you trust me?"

Bear looked at her ex-boss, now one of the closest friends she had, and nodded.

Maggie nodded along. "Good. I know someone who might be able to help with all of this. If I get him here, will you agree to meet with him?"

She thought it over for a long moment. "On the condition that you warn him. Meeting me could put him on a very dangerous list and he has to know that before he agrees to it. If he understands and accepts, I will definitely meet with him."

"Wonderful," Maggie said, businesslike once more. "Now, I would offer to give you the rest of the day off, but everything has to appear totally normal for any of the Joker's men who may be watching you. I promise that the Joker has no eyes or ears inside of this building - electronic ones, at least - so you can rest assured that this is a safe place. Can you handle being here for the rest of the day? You can come in here to decompress any time you need."

Bear replied in the affirmative, and after thanking Maggie, returned to her desk once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this story is only two days old (on AO3, at least), but I want to thank everyone who has been reading, giving kudos, and especially commenting! I'm editing this story slightly as I go along, but the last few chapters should be posted tomorrow.


	8. I Will Not Bow

Slowly, Bear discovered that - even trapped in a never-ending cycle of personal hell - life went on. Time was passing, despite all of the times she had questioned the likelihood of that happening. Christmas had passed in a flurry of phone calls with relatives and falsely-cordial gestures from coworkers… and, of course, a carefully-balanced routine of club appearances, gifts, and photographs.

Yes, the Joker was still making his presence known in her life. Bear wasn't shocked. He wasn't the type to leave anything in the past: no 'new year, new him'. She snorted at her desk as the thought passed through her mind, pausing long enough to elicit a flittering moment of amusement, but it faded quickly. There was nothing amusing about the Joker.

He had continued leaving gifts and tokens in her apartment. She was careful to thank him for each, but he had taken to hiding things occasionally - likely for the ability to threaten her for her 'lack of gratitude'. He left messages every once in a while; usually strange, indecipherable notes that still managed to be violent and twisted in only a handful of words. Bear dreaded them the most.

Every room in her apartment had been touched by the Joker, whether by gifts, notes, or his sick presence. He had made his mark on her car - leaving a small lipstick slack on the mirror on her visor - and a small 'J' in the same script that marked his cheek tended to appear in areas she spent time, even such mundane ones as the grocery store she shopped at or the mechanic's shop in which she had her oil changed.

The only place he hadn't yet marked was her office. When Bear stopped to consider this, she had to admit that it lend credence to Maggie's insistence that he couldn't get in. Bear still couldn't let herself relax completely, but it helped. She was also greatly tempted to investigate why this was, but it was such a precarious blessing that she didn't want to ask questions.

And so, work quickly became Bear's safe place. It was something she needed, especially after discovering that nearly everyone in her life had been contacted by the Joker in some way or another. The lucky ones had received a note or a veiled warning while the truly misfortunate had experienced a face-to-face meeting with the Clown himself. As a result, everyone was thoroughly terrified and some were chased out of Bear's life completely. The only ones who remained uncontacted were Bear's family. She wasn't sure exactly what he thought she would do if he tried to threaten them, but she was grateful they were being left alone. After all, she hadn't told anyone what was happening in Gotham - not even Dutch, who had experienced it first-hand - but still made the effort to talk to at least one family member every day, never knowing when it would be her last contact with them.

None of this was enough for the Joker, however. He had been even more pushy and demanding lately. He would occasionally contact her, ordering her to make an additional appearance at The Crown that week, or command her to wear something in particular that day to work. The most frightening development was that he had been hinting about staying at her apartment. Bear had managed to fend him off so far, swallowing her pride to distract him with flattery, but it was only a matter of time.

It was all just a matter of time.

From the beginning, Bear had known her time in Gotham was spent on dangerous ground, but - now more than ever - she felt as though any step she took could make the earth crumble away beneath her feet. Maggie constantly assured her that she was working on getting help, but it had been nearly a full month and Bear hadn't seen any sign of a magical protector appearing.

Until one day, when Bear was sitting idly at her computer, dreading when she would have to return home. There were only a few short hours left until she was expected to leave and it wasn't long enough.

"Bear!" a voice hissed. Bear looked up in surprise to see Maggie peering around the corner of her cubicle. "Come on, I need to talk to you."

Obligingly, Bear stood and followed Maggie to her office, stepping somewhat warily through the door when Maggie indicated for her to do so. The blinds were already drawn, throwing the room into that familiarly odd half-twilight. With the shadows stretching around the room, Bear almost didn't notice that there was another occupant, but he coughed gently, smiling an apologetic smile when she jumped.

"I'm so sorry to startle you, Miss Wells," he said politely. Bear nodded her head, determined to stay on guard.

Maggie, having stepped into the room and closed the door, approached the spot where they stood watching each other. "Bear, this is James. James, Bear."

'James' stepped forward, allowing Bear to study him more closely as he extended his hand to her. "It's nice to meet you, Bear, though I am sorry for the circumstances."

He seemed pleasant enough. A squarish, strong-looking face accentuated by glasses and a mustache of a reddish color. He looked unassuming in nature, quiet and soft-spoken, but there was a hardness in his eyes that warned Bear that he was a force with which to be reckoned.

"I agree, though I do question how much you know of my circumstances," she said finally, shaking his hand.

"I had to tell him at least part of what's been going on so that he would meet with us," Maggie answered in a measured sort of voice. "He knows enough about it to be sorry for what you've been going through."

"And you're sure we can trust him?" Bear asked, not breaking her stare at James.

"Of course," Maggie said immediately. "I've known James for a long time, and he's helped me out of a few rough circumstances of my own. I would trust him with my life."

James smiled at Maggie kindly. "It was my pleasure, Mags."

"Well, now you're trusting him with my life." When James looked back at Bear, she shrugged apologetically. "Nothing personal, but I don't know who to count on anymore. It's already scary trusting Maggie, but now she wants me to believe in some guy I've never met? I mean, there's no way to know for sure that you aren't working for-" Bear stopped short, ever-mindful of the effect the Joker's name had on people. "For the one who's been making my life so difficult."

James nodded, sympathy painted across his expressive face. "I know it's tough, but from what Maggie did tell me, it sounds like you need the help. What can I do to convince you that I'm worthy of being trusted?"

Bear frowned. "I'm not sure. I don't really know much about you. Could I maybe get a full name? It seems that you already know mine."

"Of course," he said soothingly. "My name is James Gordon. I am the commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department. I've had several run-ins with... your _problem_ myself and I have all kinds of files and records to help us fight against him in the most effective way possible."

"Is that way going to include Batman?" Bear asked, narrowing eyes at him.

His face closed, expression turning into a blank sort of mask that would have been completely unnoticeable if he hadn't been so expressive only minutes before. "Why would you think Batman would team up with the GCPD? He's been pretty determined to avoid us so far."

"Come on," Bear said with a snort. "Do you really expect me to believe that there isn't some kind of hint to his identity? Some way to find him? If he wasn't working with you, I don't think the police force would have taken this long to find him and stop him. Besides, he would be a pretty good ally: strong, smart, professional equipment, and if he dies, it isn't one of your own guys. There's not really a down side."

"I don't see that this is a necessary conversational detour," James said rather uncomfortably. "The GCPD will work to keep you safe and to put the Joker behind bars. Nothing else really needs to be discussed."

"I disagree, but you bring up a good point: What about those bars? They haven't managed to keep him confined for long in the past."

"Fair enough," he conceded, "but we've been working on a new method of capture and imprisonment that may be enough to deter him."

"Does your new method hinge on Batman?" Bear asked.

James's gaze sharpened as he stared down at Bear. "And what is this preoccupation with Batman?"

"It isn't a preoccupation," Bear argued. "I just think that, if Batman were involved, there would be less of a chance that this all could go downhill in a way that puts both my family and myself in the crossfire!"

"I could point out that every time the Joker has been caught before, he was caught by Batman and still managed to escape," James diverted.

"That's not an answer, Gordon!"

"It's the only answer I can give!" Bear stared at him in surprised silence. James sighed and rubbed at the crease between his eyebrows. "Look, even if Batman were going to be involved, it would be a risk to tell you. At this point, you say you don't trust me and I understand, but I can't truly trust you, either. The last time the Joker fixated on a civilian this way, it was Harleen Quinzel, and she turned out to be more of a danger than a 'damsel in distress'. There's every chance this could be an elaborate trap to kill Batman - assuming he was going to be part of this."

"I just need to make sure this isn't going to go wrong in a way that's going to hurt my family," Bear whispered.

James's expression softened, seeming to understand that this was her attempt at leveling with him. "I understand, I truly do. It's terrifying, knowing that someone is going to go after you _and_ your family if things go wrong. But the Joker is already elevating things in a way that will not end well for you."

Bear gave a sad laugh. "Commissioner, I already know things aren't going to end well for me. I assume Maggie told you why I came back to Gotham in the first place?" He nodded. "Well, I'm only here in the hopes of keeping him distracted from my family. I know he's going to kill me. I'm in too deep for any other outcome."

"That's not true!" Maggie interjected. Bear jumped again, having already forgotten Maggie was in the room with them. Undeterred, she continued, "James can help you get out of this. It isn't too late. Batman may help or he may not, but I owe my life to James Gordon just as much as I do to Batman himself - and James has the full power of the police force behind him." She crossed the room and stared seriously into Bear's eyes from a short distance away. "You can get out of this, Bear. This - the Joker - doesn't have to be what kills you."

Bear blinked stupidly at Maggie for a long moment. "You- You were saved by them? But… How? What happened?"

Maggie sighed, tucking a stray strand of hair behind an ear as she retreated to lean against her desk. "As I'm sure you know, my ex-husband was abusive." Bear nodded sheepishly. After all, it seemed petty to have engaged in gossip with her hated coworkers about her then-boss, but Maggie seemed unconcerned. "Well, he didn't just hate me. He hated society as a whole and had a collection of radical - violently radical - ideas on how to fix things. At his worst, he was outlining a plan to blow up a number of buildings downtown, ones that would collapse and hit others as well. He specifically chose them to cause the most amount of devastation possible."

She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs. "He had given me a warning when he first started abusing me: If I ever told anyone about what he did, he would do his best to cut my face from my head. He claimed he had always wanted to try it and he had no qualms about making me the one he experimented on."

Maggie's voice grew thick at this revelation and she closed her eyes for a moment. James slowly approached her, obviously taking care to make enough noise so she knew he was coming over, and gently rested an encouraging hand on her shoulder. She smiled briefly, then opened her eyes to glance at Bear.

"It's all still a little fresh," she admitted and Bear nodded readily. There was no time limit for healing from that kind of abuse. "Anyway, he started outlining his plans for the city. Most of the work was done in the spare bedroom, so it took me a while to find out about it. One day when he was gone, I went in and saw the blueprints, the maps, the schematics... I knew what he would do to me if I told anyone, so it took me several days to decide how to handle things. I agonized over it, but eventually, I went to James here. He was a detective, then, just happened to be leaving the station as I stood outside, struggling to go in. He stopped and asked if he could help me, and he was so kind and patient - I ended up telling him everything."

James took up the story, then. "Thanks to Maggie, we were able to save the lives of countless civilians. Her husband went to prison and, after he started trouble and tried to escape, we had him transferred to a maximum-security prison out of state. I have one of the officers call once or twice a week to make sure he is still there and the wardens have strict orders to call us if anything changes. We even have contingency plans in place in case he manages to escape."

Maggie nodded. "I can be in witness protection in less than an hour, if the situation calls for it, and James still checks up on me a couple times a month to make sure no one from my husband's past has surfaced. I have his personal phone number as well, just in case something happens. I think Commissioner Gordon's presence here is why the Joker hasn't been harassing you at work, Bear. He is capable and watchful, and the Joker knows he needs to avoid attention from certain people if he wants to keep his freedom. James is one of those people."

Abruptly, Maggie sat forward, eyes blazing with certainty and ferocity. "That's how I know he can help you, Bear. Because he helped me find my way out of a situation that I was sure would only end with my death. This doesn't have to be the way your life ends."

Bear took a deep breath. "All right, fine. Commissioner Gordon, if you can promise you'll try as hard for me as you did for Maggie, I will agree to help you in any way I can. What are you advising we do?"

"Well…" he drew out, seeming to be lost in thought. "The first thing we need to do is get your family into the Witness Protection Program. They are too big of a target, and you're right to assume the Joker would go after them if he couldn't get to you."

Wincing, Bear admitted, "I was worried you were going to say that. You see, I haven't exactly told my family what's been going on here."

"You haven't?" James asked, sounding shocked.

"Bear!" Maggie admonished loudly.

"I know, I know!" she cried in an attempt to fend them off. "I'm terrible. But I didn't want to admit that I was in trouble, and my mother would have panicked if she knew the real reason I came back to Gotham. It's hard to tell your family you've completely lost control of your life, you know?"

Maggie nodded commiseratingly while James sighed. "I know, but I also think a little bit of panic on your family's part might not be the worst thing in the world right now. There is a very dangerous criminal who has fixated on a close relative; a criminal who is known not only for making horrible threats, but carrying through with them."

"They deserve to know, Bear," Maggie said softly.

"They _need_ to know what might be coming after them," James agreed. "They need to know why they need protection."

"But how am I ever going to tell them? Especially my mom. You don't know how many lies I told to come back here without her telling me I couldn't," Bear admitted. "I'm not sure she'll believe this isn't another 'delusion' brought on by paranoia, and even if she does, I don't know if she'll ever forgive me."

"Bear, no one said it's going to be pleasant, but it's a conversation you need to have with her," Maggie urged. "If things have really gotten as bad as you've told me - or worse - he could be closing in on her right now."

"Besides, the more notice we can give the Witness Protection Program agents, the better they can get her taken care of," James added. "If we leave now, we can get to the station before anyone knows you've left."

"James, did you park in the garage like I asked you to?" Maggie questioned.

"Yes?" he answered slowly.

Maggie nodded thoughtfully. "I believe it would be wise if we disguised her, had you drive her to the station, and, Bear, you can contact your mother from there."

"Wait, why?" Bear asked with a frown. "I thought you both said this office was safe from him?"

"The office itself is safe, as well as the parking garage," Maggie told her. "We have no guarantees that he isn't monitoring the things we do online or over our phone lines. And I would be shocked if he didn't at least have someone watching the building. If he does and we disguise you, it may be enough to get you from here to the police station without attracting any suspicion." Bear was unconvinced and it must have shown on her face. With a slightly aggravated tone, Maggie added, "Worst case scenario, no one is watching and we just make extra sure you get where you need to go."

"Okay, but why the police station? Do you guys agree that my apartment is probably bugged?"

"Yes," Maggie said shortly.

"Without a doubt," James agreed. "Not only is it a virtual certainty that your apartment is bugged, but it's likely he's tapped your phone and monitors your internet. I think the best plan of action would be for you to video-chat with your mother from the police station. I know for sure that my office is clear of any bugs. I have... a certain person... who sends his people to check it at least once a week."

Bear agreed and they ransacked the lost-and-found until they created a sort of disguise. She ended up bundled into a coat of a very different cut and color than her usual, wearing a pair of high-heeled shoes to add height, and wore a knitted beanie over her hair for good measure. When she passed by a mirror or reflective surface, Bear hardly recognized herself, which could only be a good sign. When they reached the parking garage, James pulled up to the doors in a nondescript beige-ish sedan. She ducked into the passenger seat and they were off. James drove carefully, keeping a watchful eye on his mirrors to ensure they hadn't been followed. He continually assured her that they hadn't and that everything was fine, but Bear noticed that he didn't truly relax until they reached the police station.

She continued wearing her disguise until they had reached the confines of James' office. He drew the blinds for all windows, including the ones that looked outside and those that opened into the station itself. When they were as alone as they could possibly be, he opened his laptop and logged onto a secured wireless internet connection. "This is a connection used specifically for sensitive information. It was set up and maintained by... Well, you know."

After everything had been set up, he turned the laptop to Bear. She quickly contacted her mother, saying a silent prayer that Victoria was home and feeling particularly tech-savvy that day. Sometimes, she would refuse video calls simply because she wasn't confident on answering them correctly. A long moment passed while the laptop rang cheerfully, waiting for a response from the other side. When the call connected, showing a slightly off-center Victoria, Bear breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"Hey, Mom. Are you busy?" Victoria's lips moved, but no sound came through. "Mom, you need to enable your microphone. No, just click- No, don't disconnect the call! You just..." Bear made eye contact with James, who looked like he was trying not to be amused, but also pointed to his watch. Bear nodded. She knew they were on borrowed time. She looked back at the screen in time to see Victoria mouth, 'Hang on.'

Bear watched impatiently and was shocked to see the face of Vic, her oldest brother. "Vic?" she asked aloud.

"Hey, Bear!" he greeted. "I think we've got it worked out now, Mom. You should be good to talk to her."

"Baroness! So wonderful to hear from you. Is that your apartment? Does it not have windows? Why is it so dark?"

"Mom, it's not my-"

"Thought I heard my favorite little sister's voice!" Duke shouted, joining in the picture as well.

"Hey!" an offended woman said, just as Dutch entered the screen.

Bear frowned disbelievingly at James' laptop. "Wait, what's going on? Why is everyone there?"

Duke shook his head. "Mom's house got broken into about a week ago, Bear."

"We all came to make sure she was okay," Vic added. "No sign of anyone."

"We didn't want to worry you," Dutch agreed. "We know you have a lot going on."

Bear looked sharply at her little sister. Sure enough, Dutch's eyes held a bit of shadow that Bear was sure wasn't there before her run-in with the Joker.

"Well, Dutch claims you've got a lot going on," Vic laughed. "The rest of us think she's just trying to make you look important."

"Bear, we need to get this done," James said softly.

"Who is that?" Duke asked, laughing uproariously. "Do you have a man in your apartment?"

"I guess it's good that you guys are all there. I have some news."

"Baroness, if you're getting married without this man asking my permission, I swear..." Victoria trailed off, smiling warmly despite her stern words.

Bear stared at the screen, committing the scene of family closeness to memory. After all, she was about to destroy it for what was likely to be a very long time. "Everyone, this is the Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department, James Gordon." Bear beckoned him around the desk to join her. James' face appeared on the screen next to her own and Bear continued before her family could interrupt once more. "He's been advising me about something that's been going on and he's convinced me that I need to tell you about it."

It was a brutal conversation. At first, Bear's family was fully convinced this was a joke, some kind of sick prank Bear had come up with. After that, there was a period in which Victoria was sure it was a simple attack of paranoia, citing Bear's time in Dallas as proof. It was only when Dutch chimed in, telling about her time spent in the Joker's compound, that they started to believe that this was real. James was the calming influence in what could have been an explosive, family-wide meltdown. Even then, they denied the need for witness protection until James started going into detail about the Joker's crimes and the variety of things he tended to do to his victims.

Finally, with a pallid face, Victoria asked, "What do we need to do?"

"Well, I'm going to contact the agency myself," James said. "We're going to get this set up as soon as possible. In the meantime, be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Keep a bag packed with the essentials. Then, all that's left to do is for you to be ready to receive communications from them. They'll be able to give you information on the next steps."

Before she signed off, Bear looked again at her family. Rather than laughter and smiles, their faces were filled with fear matched by resolute strength. It wasn't a change for the better, necessarily, but she found just as much comfort in this. Her family would rise to defeat whatever came against them, and that was a powerful reminder. It was with this in her mind that Bear said her goodbyes, told them how sorry she was and how much she loved them, and logged out.

Closing the laptop, she looked back to James. "Thank you so much for everything you're doing. It means the world."

"I wish it didn't need to be done, but I would never leave an innocent to deal with someone like the Joker," James said firmly. "Give me a few minutes to get in contact with witness protection and I'll drive you back to the office. Your only job from here on out is to pretend everything is normal. Don't give anyone any reason to get suspicious."

Less than an hour later, Bear had returned to the office, taken off the bulky disguise, and left again. Dressed as herself, she went to her car and began the drive home on autopilot. It was good she was so accustomed to the drive, as her mind was a million miles away, going over and over the details of her family's escape from danger. _All you have to do is pretend everything is the same_ , she reminded herself. _Just keep doing what you've been doing. The end is in sight._

James had promised that, after her family was taken out of danger, she would immediately follow. He had already warned her to set aside things she couldn't live without. This would be the tricky part, as her apartment was being monitored, but she had to be ready.

And so, deep in thoughts planning how to begin moving important things around, Bear pushed the door of her apartment open only to be greeted by a brightly wicked smile. "Hello, Teddy Bear. You've been a naughty girl."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I know Witness Protection is usually for criminals, but I imagine Gotham would need to have an affiliate system in place to protect and relocate people who had been personally threatened by their extremely-vindictive villains. In any case, I hope you guys got some enjoyment out of this chapter. Let me know what you thought and I'll see you soon!


	9. Smile Like You Mean It

"A _very_ naughty girl," he repeated, eyes burning overly bright at her from far too close. "In fact, I don't know how you're gonna make this up to me."

Bear racked her brains, trying desperately to think up another reason the Joker would be angry with her. Of course, having to do this even as she fought to keep the guilt and terror off of her face was slowing the process down quite a bit. Surely he couldn't actually know about her conversation with James Gordon or the warning they had delivered to her family…

"Did you leave another present? Because I wasn't really looking for one, so if I missed a 'thank you'-" Bear's half-apology half-explanation was cut off as he calmly backhanded her, not a change of expression or tensing of shoulders to warn her of the incoming blow.

Bear rolled her head back, slightly dizzy from the shock of having her face snapped abruptly to the side. Something was bleeding - she could taste the hint of iron from it - but she wasn't sure what. She wasn't going to touch her face in an attempt to find out, either; she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he had hurt her.

At the moment, she was busy trying not to look panicked at the Joker's stranger-than-normal behavior. He had struck her and immediately began strolling around the room, humming to himself while he picked up various things and set them down again.

"Oh, Bear. Beary, Beary, Beary, Beary, _Bear._ Why do ya keep acting like ya don't _know me_?" He punctuated the end of his question by throwing down the decorative glass plate he had been holding. It, naturally, shattered into a thousand pieces, but he hadn't even glanced down at it. In fact, he strode through the mess, crunching along as he continued his weaving path through her apartment. When he spoke, his voice was as level as it had been before the small outburst.

"I know - and I know ya know - that avoiding a question isn't gonna keep me from finding out the answer in the end. So, tell me honestly: Why didja go and do a stupid thing like tellin' the cops about me, huh?"

"I didn't tell the police about you," Bear argued. It was technically true. Maggie had told James, and he was the Commissioner, not a regular cop.

"Do ya like pain, Teddy Bear? Is that it? It must be. Because you keep- pushing- me..." In several rapid strides across the room, the Joker was standing at Bear's side, burying a hand in her hair before squeezing his hand into a fist. Bear fought not to cry out as full strands were ripped from her scalp - it hurt, but not as badly as it would to give him the satisfaction of knowing it did.

Using his hand as an anchor, the Joker lowered Bear to her knees, kicking her legs out from under her when she refused to comply. When she was literally kneeling at his feet, he used his free hand to stroke down her cheek - the same one he had injured mere moments before - before placing it idly, threateningly, on her throat. His fingers stroked back and forth, mapping and exploring until they came to a rest on either side of her trachea. Bear tried her best to keep her expression and breathing even, but it was heart-stopping to realize that the crazed master criminal could literally tear out her windpipe should he feel motivated.

"Let's try this one last time, Little Bear. Didja tell the cops about me?"

Bear was in a bad spot. If she said yes, she would probably be killed immediately. She would never have the chance to tell James that the Joker was onto them, and her family probably wouldn't make it into witness protection. Not only would she die, but her family would, too. However, if Bear said no, he could kill her out of rage for her perceived stubbornness. It was a terrible position to be in, and the way that the Joker's fingers kept creeping tighter and tighter...

"No, I didn't," she denied, eyes watering as his pale fingers started digging in earnest. In a rush, she spilled out, "But I told someone else."

He stared down at her, green eyes blank. There was no sign of inner struggle, no indication that he was about to kill another human being for doing something so simple as denying his will. Bear had known for a while that he was twisted, but she realized with a chill that he was a psychopath in every real, diagnosable sense of the word. It was one thing to have read the thoughts and observations of the numerous psychiatrists and psychologists that had treated him, but seeing his lack of empathy and caring in-person simply reinforced the belief that she had to get away from him. He would surely kill her otherwise.

While she had been thinking, the Joker had continued to watch her as he thought over her explanation. Suddenly, his expression cleared, followed by an intense frown and a sigh of utter disgust. "That bitch Margaret Moore. Maggie," he added, mockingly. "I should have known she would try to get involved. I've got to figure out a way around the Bat so I can kill her once and for all. And to think, that wonderfully twisted husband of hers came so close to doing it for me..."

"No!" Bear burst out. "Don't blame Maggie. She didn't ask; I told her about you. She didn't offer help, I asked for it. I'm the one you should be angry at."

"Oh, Bear," he soothed quietly, voice filled with false sincerity and serenity. "My little, martyred Saint Teddy Bear. Don't worry a bit. I'm angry enough to hurt everyone, not just her. Ya won't haveta worry about missing out on my rage." His voice fell flat once more as his temper sizzled in his eyes. "But Miss Maggie is gonna have to suffer. She tried to take away _my_ little girl? _My_ Bear? No, she can't get away with something like that. Not without some pain."

"Yours? _Yours?_ " Bear could hear the shrill anger in her own voice, but was helpless to stop it. "I am _not_ yours, not in any way. You're not my boyfriend, lover, or even a friend. I dread seeing you, I hate that you know who I am, and I can't stand that you feel some warped need to control me! There is nothing I want more than to have you out of my life!"

His hand tightened on her throat once more. "If ya feel so strongly about it, Teddy Bear, give me one reason not to kill ya, right now."

Bear looked up at him, swallowing her fear as she said flatly, "I can't. I don't know why you've kept me alive this long, so I can't convince you to keep not killing me." She frowned slightly. "I do want to know how you found out about the video call. I was told you couldn't hack into the connection we used."

"Oh, Bear. Always so… heh, _curious._ " The Joker patted her throat condescendingly, nearly triggering Bear's gag reflex as he explained. "The Bat can keep me from his super secret internet connection to the computer of Commissioner James Gordon, but it didn't matter. I monitor your mother's internet."

Bear snarled up at him. "Why make the effort? Why put so much energy into controlling me and my life? I'm not worth it. I'm not anything you want, not really."

"My little Bear," he cooed. "So humble. Of course ya are! You're so close to breaking, and when ya do, it's gonna be _spectacular_."

"You want to know what I think?" Bear asked.

The Joker leaned down and pressed his crimson lips to her raised forehead, keeping them apart so that she could feel the smooth chill of his metallic teeth against her skin. "I'm always interested in the way that mind works, Teddy Bear."

"I think you miss Harley," Bear told him bluntly.

* * *

The roaring in his ears, that ever-present static that kept him from killing everyone at once, cranked up from an insulating background to a buzzing irritant. With the increased mental fizzing came a slight decrease in vision, but he could still see Teddy Bear's pretty little face, staring up at him with an expression of anger and defiance blazing across her features.

The anger, he could stand. It was a feeling he loved to cause in people, relished every drop of the impotent rage he could wring from them. However, that note of challenge in her face, her eyes… Unacceptable.

"And what," he asked, voice carefully pleasant, "do ya mean by that, Bear?"

"Harley left you. She is completely outside of your control. So, when you saw a chance to make a new Harley, a better Harley, you took it. You tried to put me through the same process and make me the same as her, but it didn't work."

"Are ya sure about that?" Joker purred. "I think it mighta worked better than ya think."

"No, that's why you keep wasting your time on me. Because you believe it worked while I _know_ it didn't. I'm not Harley. You tried to choose someone new, someone who was less likely to do some of the things that bothered you about Harley, but you overcorrected. Instead of being too obsessed with you, I don't like you at all. In fact, you're probably the person I've come the closest to hating."

The buzzing in his head cranked up another few notches. His thoughts - such as they were - darkened even further, shifting and snarling until they were a tangled mess that threatened to burst from him somehow. Usually, it was through killing, but Teddy Bear was his project, his new muse… _But,_ a hate-filled little voice sneered, _if she is telling the truth and isn't gonna be the new Harley, she's worthless. You can kill her and start again._

He frowned. What if Harley wasn't so common as he had believed? What if she really had been unique and he had chased her away with all of his claims that she was nothing special?

Dimly, he recognized that the part of his brain that kept him from questioning his own choices or actions was kicking in, but his focus was stolen by a confident, much louder voice refuting the other: _Of course Harls wasn't the only one like that. You've put the work into Teddy Bear and she'll turn out soon. She's so close; you just have to finish breaking her._

"Just have to finish breaking her…" he agreed out loud, and was rewarded by the look of terror flashing across the face of the still-speaking Bear. Frightened as she was, she kept talking, trying relentlessly to make him reconsider his involvement in her life.

_As if I she could actually convince me to leave her alone. She's come so far._ Even as the thought made him smile, remembering his time forging Bear into his own personal brand of crazy, a spark of anger flashed across his mind. Bear was _still_ talking. It wasn't going to work and it was starting to piss him off. _What is with everyone and fighting me, anyway? Nobody used to bother._

_Not true,_ another voice pointed out. _Harley used to fight with you a little, she would just let you win more often than Bear. The only one who's been this stubborn is…_

"Batman," he muttered darkly. Bear didn't even notice his personal discussion this time, but it was no matter. Bear was an odd mixture of Harley's potential with Batman's morals and fighting streak. That was why he found her so compelling; why he was so determined not to lose her. He had done his best to break her, but she had bent as little as possible and moved on, like a sapling that had been crushed under a boulder but kept struggling toward the sun.

Suddenly filled with a resolve to keep Bear, to turn her toward him once and for all, he released her throat and tugged her gently to her feet. She was obviously wary, but eager to get out of the submissive position. He deliberately turned his back on her, settling on the couch and crossing one leg comfortably over the other. With a single gesture, he dismissed Frost to the hallway. Maybe Bear would be more comfortable admitting the truth without an audience.

Bear remained standing, but he didn't force her to sit. "Ya know, Bear, ya talk a lot about how ya don't like me, but I see the heat in your eyes, the _spark._ Ya feel something for me. It might not be what you're used to, but that's not a surprise. I'm different from most of the other… heh, _men_ you've known. I think ya like me more than ya know."

"That isn't true!" she snapped back, but he kept pressing.

"Isn't it? Come on, Bear. I think if you're really honest with yourself, you'll agree that ya feel something for me. Think it over. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think, think, think, think, think, thinkthinkthinkthinkthink…"

"You appeal to me," she said softly, wrapping her tanned arms around her waist. He fought not to lean forward, but continued to study her with a gaze he knew had grown more intense. "You appeal to that dark, hate-filled, 'what if?' shadow in my soul, just like you do to every human being."

"Teddy Bear," he said softly, giving his voice that velvet edge that had such an effect on women in the past.

Bear turned slightly away from him, her shoulders hunching in a bit, as if to protect herself from him. It wouldn't work. "You are our collective insanity," she explained, voice holding an edge of frustration. "You are society's example of what happens when you take a brilliant man and remove all sense of morals or responsibility. You remind us why social constructs - as confining and exasperating as they can be - are still important."

From his spot on the couch, the Joker preened at the compliment from his Little Bear. He smoothed a hand through his mussed hair and drug a gloved finger around his mouth to neaten the lines of his lipstick, returning himself to the oddly-perfect, perfectly odd crime-lord he was infamous for being. "Oh, Teddy Bear. I knew ya liked me, but I didn't know your feelings ran that deep," he flirted.

But instead of melting the way Harley would have, Bear shook her head, giving him an uncomfortable tightness in his chest. "But beyond that, I don't care for you. You're a bully, a killer, a sadist. I'm not Harley and I'll never be the toy you wanted me to be."

"But you are!" he refused on instinct. "You have to be!"

The fire in her eyes died, shifting slowly over to a look of deep pity. It was too much for him, and he let his face drop down into the comforting darkness formed by his purple leather gloves.

The roaring in his ears, that ever-present static that kept him from killing everyone at once just - - - stopped.

_Never be the toy…_ the certainty in her voice...

_Never be the toy…_ the firmness of her posture...

_Never be…_ the almost regret in her dark eyes...

_Never…_ her utter lack of fear...

_**Never**_ …

Left alone in the silence of his heartbeat and the continual tightening of his chest, the Joker was staggered. Everything- _Everything_ pointed to Bear telling the truth. The building tension inside of him snapped. Harley had been a noted psychologist and he had made her love him. There was no way some nobody with an office job could resist him when Dr. Harleen Quinzel had fallen with only slight effort on his part.

* * *

Still standing across the room, Bear stared down at the Joker's hunched form on the couch. _Surely he isn't… crying?_ She had been fairly harsh, but it was warranted. Besides, what does one do with a crying Joker? What if he had a 'one tear, one death' kind of policy? She wouldn't put it past him.

Still, the silent, seemingly-grieving man on her couch bore almost no resemblance to the Clown Prince of Crime and it made Bear take a moment to think. Her natural instinct was to provide some sense of comfort, but he might kill her on the spot. _Or,_ a small, compassionate voice said helpfully, _it could tip him over the edge and he might decide to let you go once and for all so he can go get Harley back._ Bear snorted at the thought, ignoring the twinge of guilt she felt at the idea of unleashing the Joker on someone else. _Better her than me. At least she knows how to handle him. She's done it before._

Gingerly, Bear settled on the couch next to the still-unmoving Joker. She laid a hand gently on his shoulder, drawing in a breath to bring up the idea of going after Harley, but it turned into a gasp as he seized her hand in one of his own. She tugged away, but he forced her to keep the contact as he raised his head to showcase a mouth stretched into a crazed smile.

"Well," he said as calmly as though they had been having a conversation this entire time, "it's a good thing I wasn't asking your permission, Teddy Bear."

Bear studied his face from only inches away, frightened to discover that the flash of humanity he had displayed earlier was gone. "Why?" she whispered softly, unsure of her motivation for asking the question.

The smile dropped from his face like the mask it had been. "I told ya, once you start makin' deals with me, there's no going back. I warned ya before the first deal ya ever made with me, and you've made plenty since."

She gaped at him incredulously. "You never said anything like that! You never gave me any choice, either. I never agreed to any of your games, you just made it so that they were the only option."

"Oh, didn't I tell ya?" he asked, frowning a little as he pretended to think back. "How strange. I'm sure I musta meant it the whole time. Pity."

"I agreed to this madness and played your game, but I can't keep playing if I don't know the rules," Bear argued in an attempt to reboot the conversation into something a little more sane.

"Oh, but to explain the rules is to give so much away, wouldn't ya agree?" the Joker asked with a roguish grin, giving her still-captured hand a squeeze.

"No," Bear denied flatly, doing her best to pull her hand away and move further down the couch. Neither were panning out for her, but she couldn't help making the attempt.

"And that's why you'll always be the one _playing_ the games instead of _making_ them," he said with a false air of logic. "Besides, it's your own fault for playing against a madman in his own domain. Ya never had a chance, Teddy Bear," he informed her, tracing a shivering trail down the question mark burn scar on her inner arm.

"You're a- a-" Bear stuttered.

"A- a-," he mocked. "What'sa matter, Little Bear? Heh, _vocabulary_ issues?"

"I can't think of a word horrible enough to begin describing you," she hissed. His condescending grin made her rage inside, taking away her filter and making her unwise. "But you know who could probably help me come up with a word? Batman. Why don't I give him a call?"

All of the amusement vanished from the Joker and he frowned, the expression sitting oddly on his crimson lips. "Ya know, Teddy Bear, I think living on your own is givin' you a sense of security in the worst way. I think you'd better come home with me tonight. Pack a bag."

"Like hell," she spat, tensing for a fight.

"Why don't I help ya pack? I'm sure we'll find someone to come get the rest of it later," he said, voice heavy with a threat not present in his words.

She fought as he began to drag her to her feet, but the door opened before they could really get going. Frost peeked inside, gaze lingering on Bear before looking to the Joker. "Boss, there's a situation at the office. The guys are trying to take care of it, but I think it could use your personal touch."

The Joker growled at him before pushing Bear back. She stumbled over a flipped-up edge of her carpet and landed on the floor, staring up at him in bewilderment. "First thing tomorrow morning, we'll be back. Get everything packed up tonight or we're leaving it behind."

He knelt down in front of Bear and she flinched back, but he grabbed her chin and did his lipstick-slash farewell. From the grip and the jerkiness of his motions, Bear knew it was a punishment, but - since she had been expecting far worse - she accepted the gesture passively.

When he was finished, the Joker rose and stormed out of the apartment. Before Frost pulled the door closed behind his boss, he mimed texting to Bear. She frowned, but kept her phone nearby while she pointedly did anything other than pack.

Almost twenty minutes after the pair had left, Bear received a text: _There is no situation. I got him away, best I can do. Last chance. Run._


	10. Heathens

Bear's first sign of consciousness was the sudden understanding that she was moving. The second was her realization that a seatbelt was supporting her face - cutting across her cheek and up her temple - so there was a fair chance she was in a car. With that, the recollection of her previous night flooded back and Bear used the haze between sleep and wakefulness to explore the events without having to deal with them yet.

After she had gotten the text from Frost, Bear had called Maggie, who in turn had called the commissioner. Bear had thrown most of her stuff into a bag, reflecting that it was handy she had already come up with an 'essentials' list after her conversation with James Gordon. By the time Maggie called back, Bear was pacing back and forth in front of her door, single bag placed neatly nearby.

Maggie had told offered to get Bear and they would meet James, but Bear refused immediately. "Tell James to start collaborating with Witness Protection. My family is in danger and I would feel a lot more secure about their chances if he was helping extract them." That had caused another round of phone tag, but Maggie told her James had agreed.

When Bear had thrown herself into the car, Maggie had filled her in on the plan while she drove in circles around Gotham City to make sure they hadn't picked up a tail. "I'm surprised there isn't anyone following us," she had confided to Bear.

"Don't be," Bear told her. "He never likes my apartment to be watched while he's there, so he dismisses his men. I think he meant to be there longer, but he was called away abruptly. Now, where are we going?"

Maggie's jaw had set into a grim line. "Somewhere the Joker won't expect, and that's the important thing."

"That's also not an answer," Bear reminded.

"Let's just say that, for all his brilliance, the Joker never remembers that other people can do things he doesn't expect. That's how you escaped his facility and it's how we're going to get you away from him now." Bear tried to protest again, but Maggie had shaken her head firmly. "That's all I can tell you right now. There's no knowing for sure that you haven't been bugged and we don't want to give anyone a head's up about our plan."

After a few moments of silence, Maggie had glanced over at Bear and given a kind smile. "Bear, you look like you're going to pass out. Why don't you put your seat back and try to sleep? It's going to take a while to get where we're going."

Bear wanted to argue, but it was getting close to midnight and she had been exhausted, so she leaned back and had quickly fallen asleep. It was a change in the road that woke her up now. They seemed to have moved from a smoothly paved road onto one that was much bouncier. Bear opened her eyes, squinting at what was revealed by the headlights.

They were driving toward a mansion. Where most large houses were set in the middle of rolling, manicured fields, Bear could tell that no one would see this one until they were pulling up to the door. Nearby brush, vines, and even trees had been encouraged to grow every closer to the house - close enough that the pale, rough-hewn stones of the walls were almost completely obscured by greenery.

Bear was reasonably sure Maggie was going to plow through the humble, unadorned door they were driving toward, but at the last second, she veered to the left and into a small, well-camouflaged garage. Once there, she turned off the car, beckoned for Bear to follow her, grabbed Bear's bag, and started for the door.

Still fighting off the grogginess that comes from having somewhere between two hours and not enough sleep, Bear rushed after her. Maggie was studying the door when Bear finally caught up, then she reached down to tap carefully next to the bottom set of hinges. Four precise raps later, the door swung open to show a surprised-looking woman dressed in worn, dirt-encrusted clothes, red hair piled elegantly atop her head.

"M-" she started, but Maggie cut her off with a sharp gesture.

"Possible bug," she said, nodding toward Bear, who was looking back and forth between the two while she tried to figure out what was going on. The woman nodded understandingly and motioned for them to step inside.

They followed the woman down a short hallway toward the room at its other end. Bear spent the first bit of the walk studying the redhead. It was nearly three in the morning, but she was fully dressed, fully awake, and seemed to have been in the middle of something when they arrived. _Either she's a serious night owl or she doesn't sleep-_

Bear's thoughts were cut off abruptly as they walked into the other room. It was immense to the point of being cavernous and seemed majorly dominated by an assortment of plant life. Vines wrapped around every vertical surface and various greenery sprawled across the horizontal ones. Some of the vines appeared to have wrapped up around the lights, some of which were completely covered by leaves. As a result, the light that filtered down was dappled, some green while the clear sources beamed out the rich yellow of solar-esque grow lights.

In looking so curiously around the room, Bear found that not all of it was filled with plants. One corner, partially tucked away under a balcony, was filled with workout equipment and a mat set up for sparring. There was a woman over there as well, delivering what would probably have been a very painful kick to a standing punching bag before turning around. Her brown hair bounced behind her as she strode smoothly over to them in simple black workout gear. "M-"

Once more, Maggie cut off someone attempting to say her name. "Possible bug," she warned, gesturing at Bear. The woman smiled, reached into one of the many pockets in her deceptively tight-fitting pants, and pulled out a small device that looked sort of like a lighter. She flicked it smoothly, holding it out in Bear's direction, and waited. A few seconds later, Bear heard a small _pop!_ and something buried in her hair made a sizzling noise.

Naturally, Bear yelped and began digging at her hair, but the brunette woman stepped forward, gently pushed Bear's hands out of the way, and began carefully extracting the crackling thing from behind her ear. She hadn't noticed earlier, but now that she stood so close, Bear could see that the woman was as pretty as the redhead, though it wasn't immediately noticeable under the flush from her recent workout.

Finally, the woman pulled a small, dark clip from Bear's hair, dropped it casually on the floor, and stomped on it. After a few confirmation treads, she crouched to paw through the remains of the device. "A bug," she said softly, voice smooth and silky. "You were right, Maggie."

Maggie looked anything but happy about the information. "Is it a tracker, too?"

"No. Have you said anything that would lead them here?" she asked, staring up at Maggie and Bear with piercing green eyes. As Bear shuddered with the thought that they looked similar to the Joker's eyes, Maggie shook her head. "We are safe, then."

She smoothly rose to her feet while Maggie turned to Bear. "I'm sure he knows that you're gone by now. I'll call James and make sure your family is safe."

Bear nodded and Maggie drew back down the short hallway slightly. "What is all this about, Selina?" an unfamiliar voice asked.

Bear turned enough to see the redhead in her peripheral vision. She was the one who had spoken, voice husky and slightly hoarse where the other woman - Selina - had spoken much more smoothly.

Bear heard that smooth voice once more as Selina answered, "We already decided we would help her if we needed to."

"But we didn't expect her this soon," the redhead argued.

"What do you expect, Pamela? She probably isn't the one who determined the timeline."

"But still-"

"Sorry to inconvenience you in the flight for my life," Bear said acerbically. "It was a choice between getting out now or being stuck with that whack job until he killed me. I'm sure if you told Maggie that you don't want me here, she'll help me find somewhere else."

"There is nowhere else," Selina disagreed.

"We are… uniquely… qualified to help someone like you," the other woman - Pamela - pitched in reluctantly.

"How?" Bear asked, unable to fight her suspicion. How were these women going to fight off the Joker when an entire police force was unable to do it?

The women exchanged glances. "We'll explain, but first, can you tell us what happened that you had to come here now?"

Bear stared into Selina's green eyes, wanting to trust the woman but unable to push down the suspicion of her recent life. "I don't know if that's a good idea. I don't know either of you and Maggie isn't here right now."

"Well, I'm Selina," the brunette introduced, somewhat needlessly.

"And I'm Ivy," the redhead said.

Bear frowned. "I thought it was Pamela."

Ivy winced. "Only when someone is mad at me."

"You were telling us about last night?" Selina prompted politely.

Bear sighed, but told them the story, never mentioning the Joker's name directly. Still, when she was done, Selina hissed out a curse. "Look, Ivy, she's covered in bruises!"

"I noticed," Ivy said dryly. "I think I have something for them." She swayed across the room and began rummaging through a cabinet filled with small, unlabeled jars. After snapping on a pair of gloves, she came back across the room and began dabbing a rose-scented balm on the bruises across Bear's throat, arms, and hand.

Ivy spoke softly as she worked. "You're safe here, you know. You're among friends. We all understand what it's like to be hunted by… obsessive admirers."

Bear didn't doubt that. No doubt the curvy, polished redhead had multiple admirers who wouldn't take no for an answer. And with the way Selina walked and the weight of her green-eyed stare, she probably hadn't escaped that kind of attention, either.

Before she could ask about how they intended to stave off the Joker, Maggie strode back in the room, looking stressed, but smiling. "Your family is safe," she said in greeting. It was the best thing Bear had ever been told. "They made it into witness protection about an hour ago."

"And the- he can't get into wherever he took them?" Bear asked.

Selina gave a short, mirthless laugh. "Oh, he could. There's nowhere the Joker couldn't get into if he wanted. The only question is if he wants to."

Ivy nodded. "By putting them in witness protection, the idea is to make it hard enough for him to get to them that it just wouldn't be worth it."

It wasn't exactly comforting, but it was more believable than a sudden, magical answer to all of her problems, so Bear took heart in the explanation.

"I do need to leave, though," Maggie added. "In case someone is tracking the car, they'll have a harder time finding you. Are you okay staying here?"

"I guess, but what's the plan, exactly?"

Maggie glanced behind her at the other two women. "We can explain it to her," Ivy offered.

Maggie smiled at her gratefully and before Bear could protest, Selina walked up to the soon-departing woman and hugged her. "It was great to see you again, Mags. Can you come hang out with us soon?"

"You are allowed to visit when there aren't active crises and death threats, you know," Ivy reminded, obviously smiling.

"I know, I know," Maggie agreed. "I'll be in touch soon. Thank you again, so much. Bear's important to me."

"Are you sure you don't want to stay long enough to see… You know?" Ivy asked.

"We can go get her," Selina offered.

Bear frowned. Up to this point, she hadn't even been aware there was a third member of this household. Before she could dwell on it overly much, Maggie was pulling her into a hug. "Take care of yourself, Baroness. You're going to get out of this, I promise."

"Thank you, Maggie. I can never thank you enough for everything you've done for me," Bear said sincerely, all hints of frustration gone.

"It was my pleasure, Bear. Take care of yourself." With that, and a wave to Ivy and Selina, Maggie was gone.

Bear turned to the other two women. "So what's going on? No offense, but I don't think you two are going to be able to take on the Joker. Not and survive."

Ivy smirked. "I can see why you would think that, but we have a secret weapon."

"Something the Joker doesn't expect," Selina agreed. "We're going to win, and with any luck, the Joker will be gone for good."

"What's the secret weapon?" Bear asked, ready to see some kind of proof of the Joker's end.

"I'll wake her," Selina offered and disappeared up the staircase toward the second floor.

"Do you need anything?" Ivy asked suddenly in the silence. "I can get you some tea, or find a place for you to sleep…"

"No, thank you. I'm fine," Bear replied, slightly surprised that it was true. It was nearly six in the morning, the sun would rise soon, and she had gotten a few hours of car sleep, but the adrenaline was keeping her going now. "Why did you decide to help me?" she asked. Ivy looked taken aback and Bear explained, "This is a lot of trouble, a lot of danger, for someone you don't know. What are you getting from helping me?"

Ivy seemed to consider this. "Well, Selina was all for helping you from the start. She has… an _interest_ in Batman, and the Joker is by far his most dangerous enemy. Working to protect you seems like the most direct way to end him and thus protect the Bat."

Bear nodded, trying to to let her surprise show. "And you? Why are you doing this?"

"I hate the Joker," Ivy revealed, heat in her voice for the first time since Bear had met her. "I think his death will bring healing and protection for many. If you are to be included in that, so much the better."

"Thank you," Bear said awkwardly.

They stood in silence for another few minutes, Ivy strolling around to check on her plants. Bear was almost falling into a trance as the other woman stroked leaves and murmured reassurances to the various plants, but her attention was soon drawn by the reappearance of Selina.

In her oddly-gliding gait, Selina descended the staircase, followed by an unfamiliar woman. White-blonde hair flowed down her back in waves and her blue eyes observed Bear sharply from behind wire-framed glasses. She was clad in a simple white blouse and jeans, bare feet silent on the floor when she reached the ground level and approached behind Selina.

"Bear," Selina started, "This is Harleen, Harley for short. She's going to help us with your problem."

In a flash, Bear's mind overlaid the image of Harley Quinn - no doubt remembered from some long-ago newsreel - over the petite woman. She gaped. "You're Harley Quinn! And if you're her, then…" she glanced at the other two, remembering bits of new articles and scraps of office conversation. "You must be Poison Ivy, and I would bet that makes you Catwoman!"

Bear looked to each of the respective women in turn, who glanced at each other bracingly before looking back to Bear. "Yes," Ivy confirmed eventually. "Those are the names we're known by, but we're working toward something new now."

Harley smiled hesitantly. "We're gonna kill the Joker."

"But- But why?" Bear asked incredulously. "You got out. You got away. Why risk coming back?"

"Did he torture you?" Harley asked. The question was abrupt, but there was a sincere concern in her blue eyes.

Bear nodded.

"Me too, hon. Me too." She shook her head and gulped before speaking again. "I can't let him get away with that again. I'm real sorry ya went through all of that, but I'm gonna take care of it once and for all. I wasn't here when the shit hit the fan the second time, but I'm coming back with a mop."

"He was supposed to come get me this morning. He was going to make me move in with him," Bear admitted. "I'm sure, with the bug, he knows that I'm gone."

"Let me handle that," Harley assured.

"He's probably going to call," Ivy added.

Bear grimaced. "I don't think so. Why would he want to tip his hand by telling us he knows I'm gone?"

All three women laughed. "Trust me, honey," Harley said, still chuckling. "He's gonna call. This has Mista J written all over it."

"Until then, let's talk about the plan," Selina suggested. "After we get this call from the Joker, we're going to go meet him. You'll stay here an hour or two after we leave, then you'll go get in the specially-rented car. It was rented under a false name, so it shouldn't be traced to you or us. When you get into it, drive until you're out of state. We've programmed an address into the GPS already. That will be the place where you'll meet up with witness protection and they'll get you to your family. Understand?"

Feeling a little dazed, Bear nodded. It sounded like a fairly foolproof plan, but so little had gone right lately for her, especially if the Joker was involved...

Bear's phone rang softly and she pulled it from her pocket with shaking fingers. Harley took it gently from her and set it on the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of it. The others joined her as she accepted the phone call and immediately activated the speakerphone feature.

After a brief pause, the Joker's deranged voice floated through the still air, seeming utterly alien in a place filled with so much life. "Oh, Teddy Bear… I really _hate_ when my toys wander off. I'm not gonna let ya go that easily. I'm comin' for you. Be ready."

Harley leaned in and the change into her Harley Quinn persona was so complete that it took Bear a moment to process. Her eyes widened just a tad too far and her mouth stretched into a smile that nearly rivaled the Joker's. "Oh, Mista J… Guess who's back?" Her voice kept the sickly sweet affectation, but added a hint of poutiness. "Your Teddy Bear is gone, I took care of that. She was… easy."

Even as she gave a rich, rolling siren's laugh, she patted Bear's knee, comforting her about her own hypothetical death. Meanwhile, the surprise emanating from the Joker was palpable, even through the phone, but Harley's short speech seemed to have given him time to adjust.

"Why, my little Harley Quinn. I haveta say, when I pictured you… heh, _resurfacing_ , it wasn't quite in this sense. We'll set up a meeting. There are some things I wanna discuss with ya: mostly, _not touching my fucking toys._ "

Bear winced back at the rage in his voice, but Harley seemed unconcerned - eager, even - as she purred, "Yeah, Mista J? You gonna try an' hurt me?" She gave another laugh when he growled out an affirmative. "Good. Tell ya what: I'll meetcha at the Crown. We can _reminisce_ over all of our good times... " She trailed off before cracking, "That should take up a solid minute."

The Joker snarled, "Ooh, babydoll. You'd better be ready. Daddy's coming home and he's not happy. I'll be at the Crown in an hour."

"I'll see ya then," Harley promised breathily before disconnecting the call.

"Are you crazy?" Bear asked as soon as it ended. "This place is at least two hours from Gotham and you have to be planning something to keep from getting killed by him."

Selina chuckled. "Bear, villains don't exactly work on schedules. When the Joker said 'an hour', we can count on it _not_ being an hour."

"My guess is that he's either there, close by, or hours away," Ivy chimed in. "To get there on time would be asking to walk into an ambush or have one set up outside the building in case you did manage to leave alive."

"We won't be going in until we've got everything set up and ready to go," Harley summarized. "Girls, I'm going to get dressed in my old costume."

"I'll make some phone calls," Selina volunteered. At Bear's questioning glance, she explained, "We've decided to act on a temporary truce with Batman and the GCPD. They're letting us help to increase their chances of taking the Joker alive."

"I thought the plan was to kill him?" Bear asked.

"Of course it is," Ivy said with a wicked wink. "As soon as I've changed into my own fighting gear, I'm going to whip up a few surprises for our side."

* * *

Following their instructions, Bear had found the rented car in a tunnel formed from carefully-placed vines and began following the GPS. It was fortunate the feature was enabled, as she spent most of the drive bouncing between a sleep-deprived haze of weariness and the adrenaline of true fear, mixed with visions of the three heroic villains setting out: Catwoman - claws sharp and at the ready, Poison Ivy - vines curling menacingly up and down her limbs, and Harley Quinn - gleefully spinning her iconic, over-sized mallet.

Finally, Bear ended up in front of a nondescript, strip-mall-esque building. When she found the courage to enter, she found herself in a small room with her family and several government employees, identified by the IDs clipped neatly to their lapels.

She only had a moment to see this before she was wrapped up in a hug from Victoria. "Shh… It's okay, Baroness. You made it. You're safe."

For the first time in far too long, Bear could agree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, guys, that's it. I will remind you that I've only seen two Batman movies and Suicide Squad, so my knowledge of DC properties is limited. I thought it would be appropriate to leave Harley and the Joker fighting. As for not giving a conclusive answer on the outcome, you decide. Does Harley kill the Joker? Does he kill her? Do they forgive each other and hunt down Bear and her family? Your choice.
> 
> Whatever you decide, thanks for reading this twisted little story. It's been a real thrill writing for you! Hope you all enjoyed and may you find Bear's peace, Harley's zeal, or the Joker's intensity, whichever best suits you. Pick your poison.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first DC fic, and as a life-long Marvel fan, I apologize if there are any glaring plot holes. I would like to explain that the Safety Dance has really nothing to do with the story as a whole and I apologize for using it as a title, but I listened to it a lot while writing (along with various other songs I feel the Joker would play in his club) and thought, 'Why not?'
> 
> Also, lest anyone think I didn't do my research, I know the Grin And Bare It is the Joker's accepted business, but I feel it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that he would branch out and open up a dance club in addition to his strip club. My understanding of Gotham's layout may be a little skewed. I was unable to find a solid map, so the present setup is the product of scouring various Wikipedia articles and video game synopses.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
